3454 BELARUS (Vitebsk) - The Assumpton Cathedral in Vitebsk

3454 The Assumpton Cathedral in Vitebsk

Built in a picturesque place, on the high bank of the Western Dvina River, the Assumption Cathedral is one of the outstanding monuments of the architecture of Vitebsk. It is also the only cathedral in Vitebsk, the lower active layer of which is located underground. The Assumption mountain, where now the cathedral stands, has been used for construction of religious buildings during thousands of years. Initially, there was a pagan shrine, and with the birth of Christianity a church was built at this place, which burned more than once in fires.

3067 BELARUS (Grodno) - Saint Francis Xavier Cathedral in Grodno

3067 Saint Francis Xavier Cathedral in Grodno

Probably the most spectacular landmark of Grodno, the Roman-Catholic Cathedral of Saint Francis Xavier, originally a Jesuit church, was consecrated in 1705, in the presence of Tsar Peter I and King August II. Its construction was started in 1678, but due to wars that rocked Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth at that time lasted 27 years. Its late Baroque frescoes were executed in 1752. The monastery was dissolved in 1773 and the church became a parish one.

0476, 2926, 2959 BELARUS (Vitebsk) - Saviour Transfiguration Church and Saint Sophia Cathedral in the town of Polatsk (UNESCO WHS - Tentative List)

0476 Saint Sophia Cathedral in Polatsk (1)

Located on the Dvina river, Polatsk is one of the most ancient cities of the Eastern Slavs. The Primary Chronicle listed Polotsk in 862, together with Murom and Beloozero. The town was named in accordance with the Palata river name, on the right bank of which the first settlements appeared. From 10th to 13th centuries Polatsk was the central town of the Polatsk Principality. Favorable geographical location on trade ways ("From Varengians to Greeks") promoted the rapid economical and cultural development. At that time outstanding examples of architecture of the period Saint.Sofia Cathedral and Savior Transfiguration Church were constructed.

2926 Saint Sophia Cathedral in Polatsk (2)

In the winter of 1066-1067, very angry that was excluded from the succession of Kievan Rus', because his father (even if was the nephew of Vladimir The Great, Grand Prince of Kiev) hadn't been prince in Kiev, Vseslav the Sorcerer, Prince of Polotsk, went through fire and sword the northern areas of this principality. In this campaign he pillaged and burnt Novgorod the Great, removing the bell and other religious objects from the Cathedral of Holy Wisdom and bringing them to decorate his own cathedral of the same name in Polotsk, completed by Byzantine architects even in that year. Actually here will be buried, 34 years later, and after him another 15 Polotsk princes.

2959 Savior Transfiguration Church in Polatsk
 in 1870's

Even though it was renovated many times over the centuries, and the current appearance is an example of the Vilnius Baroque style, the cathedral still retains some elements from the original construction, so it's considered the oldest church in Belarus. Named after Hagia Sophia (Holy Wisdom) Cathedral in Constantinople, this church originally had seven domes, later reduced to five after it was rebuilt following the fire of 1447. One of the characteristic features of the cathedral is facetted apses, typically found on wooden temples.

2731 BELARUS - Belarusian alphabet

The Belarusian alphabet is based on the Cyrillic script and is derived from the alphabet of the Old Church Slavonic language. The alphabet of the Medieval Cyrillics (11th century) included forty-three letters. During the evolution of the Belarusian Alphabet, fifteen letters were dropped, the last four of them going after the introduction of the first official Belarusian grammar in 1918, and four new letters were added, thus producing the modern layout of thirty-two letters. Among the four new letters was letter ⟨ў⟩, proposed by Russian linguist Pyotr Bezsonov in 1870.

2583 BELARUS - Kupalle Holiday

2583 "Kupalle Holiday" (1921-1922), painting by Mikhail Filipovich

Kupala Night, also known as Ivan Kupala Day (Feast of St. John the Baptist; Belarusian: Купалле / Kupalle), is celebrated in Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, Baltic countries and Russia currently on the night of 6/7 July in the Gregorian or New Style calendar, which is 23/24 June in the Julian or Old Style calendar still used by many Orthodox Churches. The celebration relates to the summer solstice when nights are the shortest and includes a number of Slavic rituals.

2053 BELARUS (Brest) - Saint Nicholas Cathedral in Brest Fortress

2053 Saint Nicholas Cathedral in Brest Fortress

In 1795, when the Poland-Lithuania Commonwealth was partitioned for the third time, the city of Brest was annexed by Russia. In the 19th century, the Russians demolished the Polish Royal Castle and most of the Old Town "to make room" for a large fortress which was built in and around the city. During the years 1851-1876 an Orthodox Church was built in the fortress, dedicated to Saint Nicholas.

1530 BELARUS - Belarusian traditional ornaments

1530 Belarusian traditional ornaments

Textile is one of the most ancient art forms in Belarus, and the geometric ornaments are so important in this country, that are present on its national flag. It was taken from a hand towel embroidered in 1917 by Matrena Markevich from the village of Kastsilishcha, Senna district. Many of these ornaments are pre-Christian, being used in sacred East Slavic rituals, religious services and ceremonial events such as weddings and funerals, and, although they have undergone some changes over time, they have survived until today.

1519 BELARUS (Minsk City) - National Library of Belarus

1519 National Library of Belarus

The National Library of Belarus was founded on 15 September 1922, and houses the largest collection of Belarusian printed materials and the third largest collection of books in Russian behind the Russian State Library (Moscow) and the Russian National Library (St Petersburg). Since 2006 is located in a new 72m high building in Minsk, which can seat about 2,000 readers and features a 500-seat conference hall.

1265 BELARUS - Blowing in horn

1265 Belarusian blowing in horn

Generally speaking, the traditional musical instruments emerged from very simple objects of life that were used to produce sounds and developed into rather complicated mechanisms. One should not forget that original music instruments were used not primarily for entertainment, but as signal instruments by gatherers, hunters and shepards. Probably that the first instruments used to make sounds were the wind instruments and the percussion ones.

0245, 1259 BELARUS - The map and the flag of the country

0245 Belarus map

I have the conviction that Belarus and Ukraine broke away from Russia in 1990s for purely political reasons; ethnic and linguistic differences between the three being minimal, not to say also that they share the same history.

History: Many of the Russian principalities were first gathered under the flag of Kievan Rus, its dissolution in the 13th century following the Tatars attacks leading to the separation of northern Russians from Belarusian (White Russians) and Ukrainians. Moscow principality, became more stronger, shook the Tartar yoke in the late 15th century, conquering many of the Russian lands and becoming Grand Duchy of Moscow. Starting with Ivan the Terrible, the rulers took the title of "Grand Duke of all the Russias", but White Ruthenia (Belarus) and Ukraine remained under the rule of Grand Duchy of Lithuania (subsequent Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth) until 1795, when both were annexed by the Russian Empire (except a small part of Ukraine, Galicia, which remained under austrian control).

Language: Belarusian, Russian, Ukrainian, and Ruthenian have a high degree of mutual intelligibility, i.e. the speakers of any of these languages can readily understand without a previous study, and without the need for translation, many scholars claiming that they are dialects of the same language, and not different languages.

1185 BELARUS (Minsk City) - Minsk Passazhirsky railway station

1185 Minsk Passazhirsky railway station

Located in the centre of the capital Minsk, and sometimes called Minsk Ploshchad Lenina due to the metro station serving the terminal, Minsk Passazhirsky is the primary passenger railway station in Belarus, the hub of national passenger transport. It is also served by several international trains to various countries of Europe, mainly to Russian and Ukrainian destination. It was built in 1873 as Vilenski vakzal, Vilnius station, but the initial wooden building was demolished in 1890 and rebuilt in stone.

0970 BELARUS (Minsk City) - Trinity Suburb

0970 Trinity Suburb in Minsk City

Located on left bank of the Svisloch River, on the Trinity Hill, Minsk's old town, more commonly known as Troitskoe Predmestye (Trinity Suburb) after the former Trinity Church that once stood in the area, is a slight misnomer in that it dates from just three decades ago. Built between 1982 and 1985 on the site of a former settlement dating from the 12th century, Trinity offer a break from the sprawling concrete and the Stalinist architecture of the city's centre, rebuilt (not restored) after WWII, when Minsk was destroyed in proportion of 80%.

0967 BELARUS (Mogilev) - Saint Nicholas Monastery

0967 Saint Nicholas Monastery in Mogilev

Located in eastern Belarus, at about 76km from the border with Russia's Smolensk Oblast and 105km from the border with Russia's Bryansk Oblast, Mogilev (also spelled Mahilyow) is a city with a long history, documentary attested since 1267. From the 14th century was part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, then, since 1569, part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. In 16th-17th centuries the city flourished as one of the main nodes of the east-west and north-south trading routes. In 1577 Polish King Stefan Batory granted it with city rights under Magdeburg law.

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.

0539 BELARUS (Vitebsk) - Braslau Lakes National Park

0539 Braslau Lakes National Park

Located in the north-west of the Belarus, near the borders with Lithuania and Latvia, the Braslau National Park has 55 km long and between 5 km and 29 km wide and is a unique ecosystem with 30 glacial lakes and a large area of pine forests. The southern part of the park is represented by lowlands covered with forests, the major part of the area is occupied by different types of bogs.

0288, 0456 BELARUS (Grodno) - Mir Castle Complex (UNESCO WHS)

0288 Mir Castle Complex (1)

"This is a fertile region in the geographical centre of Europe, at the crossroads of the most important trade routes, and at the same time at the epicentre of crucial European and global military conflicts between neighbouring powers with different religious and cultural traditions", write on the official UNESCO site, in the description of Mir Castle Complex, included in the list of World Heritage Sites in 2000. A phrase which states, concise and exact, the causes of the turbulent history of the castle in the image, situated 90km south-west of Minsk, in the urban settlement with the same name, which has now only 2,500 inhabitants.

0456 Mir Castle Complex (2)

Built as a fortress at the end of the 15th century, by the order of prince Yuri Ilyinich, in Gothic style, the castle became in 1569 the property of the powerful Radziwill family, which held it until 1813. It was besieged in 1655, 1706, 1794, and 1812, being several times destroyed and pillaged, but each time reconstructed and extended, first in the Renaissance and then in the Baroque style. As says Oleg Trusov, "earth walls were made around the castle with bastions at the corners; a water moat surround them. To the north of the walls an Italian garden was laid, to the south - an artificial lake."

0361 BELARUS (Brest) - Kamyanets Tower

0361 Kamyanets Tower

Kamyanets Tower is located in the town with the same name in Belarus, at about 40 km north from Brest. Erected in 1271–1289 by the architect Oleksa, on the order of Vladimir Vasilkovich, Prince of Volhynia, as a keep (donjon) of a frontier stronghold on the northern border of the principality, on the stony steep bank of the Liasnaja (Lysna or Leśna) River, it was later named Belaya Vezha (the White Tower), probably because its proximity to Belavezhskaya Pushcha, not from its color.

0347 BELARUS (Minsk) - Architectural, Residential and Cultural Complex of the Radziwill Family at Nesvizh (UNESCO WHS)

0347 Nesvizh Castle

I mentioned here about Radziwill family, so prominent for centuries for Central and Eastern Europe, that no less than six countries (Belarus, Finland, Lithuania, Poland, Russian Federation, and Ukraine) nominated the archives of this family to the UNESCO Memory of the World Register in 2008, they being inscribed on the Register in 2009. The Radziwiłł family owned a total of 23 palaces in five countries, three of which are UNESCO WHS: Radziwiłł Palace, Mir Castle Complex, and Nesvizh Castle.

0239 BELARUS (Brest) - Alexander Nevsky Church of Kobryn

0239 Alexander Nevsky Church of Kobryn

Two hundred years ago, more precisely on June 23, 1812, Napoleon’s army crossed the Russian border at the Neman river in the Kaunas region (now in Lithuania), beginning the disastrous campaign in Russia. On June 27 Russians won the first victory in a battle near Kobryn, located 52km away from Brest (now in Belarus), the 3rd Army, under the leadership of  general AP Tormasov, inflicting a defeat on Jean Reynier’s Corps, composed of Saxons. For the city it wasn't a blessing, because on this occasion have burned 548 of the 630 houses.

0197 BELARUS (Vitebsk) - The cathedral of Saint Anthony of Padua

0197 The cathedral of Saint Anthony of Padua

Pastavy is located on the bank of the river Myadelka, 250km away from Vitebsk, on the railway which connect this city and Vilnius. Initially the settlement was called Posadnik, and in 996 it was owned by Danut Zenovich. The name of the town was changed in 1409 by Lithuanian Prince Vitovt. The town is connected with the noble family of the Tizengauzs, in particular the famous elightener Antony Tizengauz who built here a number of dwelling homes and 35 factories that used to make stamp paper, carpets, canvasses, hats, belts and even stagecoaches.