Brody (; ; ; ) is a city in Zolochiv Raion of Lviv Oblast (province) of western Ukraine. It is located in the valley of the upper Styr River, approximately northeast of the oblast capital, Lviv. Brody hosts the administration of Brody urban hromada, one of the hromadas of Ukraine. Population: . Brody is the junction of the Druzhba and Odessa–Brody oil pipelines. History The first mention of a settlement on the site of Brody is dated 1084 (Instructions by Vladimir Monomach). It is believed to have been destroyed by Batu Khan in 1241. Polish Kingdom From 1441 Brody was the property of different feudal families (Jan Sieniński; from 1511, Kamieniecki). Brody was granted Magdeburg town rights by Polish King Stephen Báthory by virtue of a privilege issued in Lublin on 22 August 1584. It was named Lubicz after the Lubicz coat of arms of the founder, Stanisław Żółkiewski, one of the most accomplished military commanders in Polish history (not to be confused with Lubech, Lubecz). The king also set up three annual fairs. These privileges were confirmed by King Sigismund III Vasa in 1597 at the Warsaw Sejm. Already in documents from 1598 the city appeared under the name Brody. It was a private town of the Polish Crown, owned by houses of Żółkiewski, Koniecpolski and Potocki. From the 17th century until the Holocaust the city was populated not only by Ruthenians and Poles, but also by a significant number of Jews (70% of the town's population), Armenians, and Greeks. From 1629, the city became the property of Stanisław Koniecpolski, another of the most distinguished military commanders in Polish history, who ordered the construction of the Brody Castle (1630–1635). The castle, or rather the fortress, was designed by the French military engineer Guillaume Le Vasseur de Beauplan. It was one of the strongest fortresses located on the route of frequent Tatar and Cossack invasions. King Władysław IV Vasa, wanting to reward and assist Koniecpolski in the construction of the fortress, issued a privilege in 1633 in Kraków, in which he equated fairs in Brody with those in Lublin and Toruń, granted staple right and exempted city residents from taxes for 15 years. Under the patronage of Koniecpolski, the city flourished. In 1637 he founded a school in which he employed lecturers from the Kraków Academy, Poland's leading university. Its first director was Jan Marcinkowski. In 1643 he founded a