Things people have told me about this battle:

1) Hitler declared the city some sort of official secure place — No retreat allowed.

2) The city was almost completely destroyed during the fighting.

3) The Soviets attacked the city nine separate times before finally succeeding.

4) Soviet generals had, at one point, announced all the way up their chain of command (all the way to Stalin), that the city was captured. When they realized they were mistaken, they were in an absolute panic and rather than report their failure, resorted to massive bombardment of the city and another attack.

5) After Ternopil, the retreating Nazi army didn’t have to organize a defense around Lviv. (I also heard the Soviets wanted to preserve the value of Lviv and purposely hurried.) I know there was a little fighting at the railway station in Horodok, 30km past L’viv.