The book Castles and Fortresses of Western Ukraine was written by a Lviv historian Orestes Matsyuk, who spent more than 30 years of his life studying the castles and fortress of Ukraine. His aim when writing the novel was to make a complete brochure of all of Ukraine's ancient castles. He recorded more than 5000 objects when making the book. The system of his work was to identify the news writes up of the archival building and printed sources, the gathering of old plans, photos, drawings, the installations of expeditionary field survey of current state of photographic images sights, which produces graphic reconstructions of monuments and prepared the printed catalogue.
The purpose of this popular book is to serve as a guidebook into history for tourists, lovers and collectors of antiques. It contains all the necessary information about the tourist attractions which are arranged in accordance with the proposed seven bus routes which covered Ivano-Frankivsk, Ternopil, Lviv, regions and other small areas that is adjacent to (Dubno, Ostrog, Kamenetz-Podolsk, Hawtin), where one can visit. The interested reader can get acquainted with the famous monasteries, castles, churches, cathedrals and our ancient monuments. Page one of this book contains the mapping scheme of each route. The book is richly described with hundreds of unique black and white pictures (the photograph are commonly old destroyed buildings) and the images of reconstructed monuments. The best quality of image is used, which is only possible with an offset printing on plain paper. They are lists of recommended books, name and geographical indexes at the end of the book, which makes it a lot easier to navigate through the content.
One of the most intriguing slogans of the western Ukrainian fortress and castles stated that, "it is impossible to be successful in the future with a clean slate in the past". The ancient castles had guardians of our history which were subjected to human impact and natural changes. Most of these castles and fortresses are still in good condition, while some are also ruin. There are around 20 functional monuments structure of kievan Rus and about 5000 castles. All the fortress and castle in Ukraine kept the legendary and romantics stories, detailed information about the beautiful princess, Cossacks, knights, magnates and the fingerprints culture of Poland, Russia Lithuania, Austria-Hungary, and Turkey "movies stars", movies directors and producers were also retained.