0582 BELARUS (Brest) - The ruins of the Ruzhany Palace

0582 The ruins of the Ruzhany Palace

The ruins of this palace is situated beside the little town of Ruzhany, on the river Ruzhanka, in Western Belarus. Between the 16th and 19th centuries Ruzhany (then called Różany) was the main seat of the senior line of the Sapieha family, a Polish-Lithuanian princely family of Ruthenian origin, descending from the medieval boyars of Smolensk, who acquired great influence in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the 16th century.

In the 16th century, Różany was the site of Lew Sapieha's castle, destroyed in 1700 and rebuilt as a grand Neoclassical residence in the 1770s by the architect Jan Samuel Becker. The palace was set in an English park, and apart from it, there were a theatre, an orangery, and several other outbuildings. The Sapieha estates were nationalised in the aftermath of the November Uprising (1831). Three years later, the palace was sold to Ari Leib Pines (a financial advisor of the Duke Sapieha) to be used as a textile mill and weaving factory. In 1914 it burned down as a result of a fire inadvertently caused by washerwomen, and it was partially restored in the 1930's, but was ruined again in WWII.

About the stamps
The first two stamps, depicting the narcissus and the tulips, are part of the 12th series of definitive stamps Garden Flowers, about which I wrote here.

The third stamp, depicting Eurasian Curlew (Numenius arquata), is the one issued in 2011 (14 march) in the series Bird of the Year, edited under the auspices of BirdLife Belarus (APB). This organisation, founded in 1998, is a BirdLife International partner, a global Partnership of conservation organisations that strives to conserve birds, their habitats and global biodiversity, founded in 1993. The first stamps with the APB logo appeared in 2002, and since 2003 is published every year a stamp in the series Bird of the Year.

References
Ruzhany Palace - Wikipedia
Sapieha Palace - Jewish Gen
Historical Reference - Pruzhany district executive committee

Sender:  Anastasia / Raised-From-The-Dead (postcrossing) BY-394495
Sent from Minsk (Minsk / Belarus), on 20.03.2012 
Photo: S. Plitkevich