Location: Karelichy District, Hrodna voblast Map
Constructed: 14th century
Mir Castle, castle and park complex "Mir" (Belarusian castle-palacava
complex "Mir") - a defensive fortification and residence in the urban
village (pgt) Mir of the Korelichi district of the Grodno region of
Belarus. An architectural monument, included in the UNESCO World
Heritage List (since 2000). The architectural complex includes a castle
of the 16th-20th centuries, ramparts of the 17th-18th centuries, a pond
of 1896-1898, a chapel-tomb of the Svyatopolk-Mirskys with a watchman’s
house and a gate, landscape and regular parks, and a manager’s house. It
is located in the village of Mir, on the right bank of the Miranka
River.
Built at the beginning of the 16th century by the magnate
Yu. I. Ilyinich, the castle became the first privately owned castle on
the lands of Belarus. From 1568 the castle was owned by the Radziwills
(until 1828), then the Wittgensteins (until 1891). The last owners of
the castle were the princes Svyatopolk-Mirsky (until 1939), after which,
with the advent of Soviet power, the castle became state property. Mir
Castle is the easternmost Gothic building, as well as the largest and
the only non-cult object of the few remaining examples of original
Belarusian Gothic.
The structure of the castle is similar to a
square with a side of about 75 meters, at the corners there are
five-story towers 25-27 meters high, which go beyond the walls. The
fifth tower is six-story with an entrance gate.
The complex
participated in almost all wars that swept through the Belarusian land
in due time: starting from the Russian-Polish war of 1654-1667. and
before the Patriotic War of 1812, the castle was besieged and stormed
more than once. It was damaged in 1665 and 1706, then restored at the
beginning of the 18th century. Then it was badly damaged again in 1794.
In 1812, under the walls of the castle, a battle took place between the
Polish cavalry of General Rozhnetsky, which was part of the French army,
and the rearguard of the 2nd Russian army - the Cossack cavalry of M. I.
Platov.
For its time, Mir Castle was a powerful military
structure, where almost all known elements of medieval fortification
were used and local traditions of castle architecture were embodied. It
was built according to the project of a talented architect, who, most
likely, was a master from the people and owned an artistic taste. The
lack of good fixtures did not prevent the architect from creating a
first-class military engineering structure for that time and decorating
it with various architectural details. The high saturation of firepower
with mutual overlapping of sectors of fire, the placement of towers with
the calculation of flanking fire along the walls, high, steep ramparts
with bastions at the corners made the Mir Castle a first-class defensive
structure of its time.
Throughout its existence, the castle
complex in Mir has been repeatedly restored and rebuilt, but these
processes have not made significant changes to its volumetric planning
and compositional system. At the same time, the Mir Castle retained its
original stylistic elements of the Gothic and Renaissance, while
acquiring new unique layers, characteristic of the Baroque and Romantic
styles. Together with the original style features, they formed the
unique look of the castle, thanks to which the complex became on a par
with the architectural monuments of the World Heritage Site. The Mir
Castle, as one of the most recognizable castles in Belarus, is featured
on the banknote of 50 Belarusian rubles.
All elements of the
castle make up an integral architectural composition, which creates a
complete complex of a unique structure that had no analogues in the
lands of the Baltic States, Poland and Russia.
Since 1989, a
branch of the National Art Museum of Belarus. In 2011 it received the
status of an independent museum.
As of 2019, the castle has a
hotel where tourists can stay, a restaurant and a cafe. A ticket to the
museum allows, in addition to visiting the halls inside the castle, to
bypass the galleries and climb the towers, where part of the exposition
is located.
In Belarusian historiography, it was widely believed that Mir was
first mentioned in the so-called Lindenblatt Chronicle in 1395 in
connection with the attack of the troops of the Teutonic Order,
which, supporting Svidrigailo in his civil strife against Vitovt,
invaded Novogrudok, reached Mir and destroyed the settlement.
However, in 2014, the Belarusian historian Oleg Litskevich
discovered that the date of mentioning Mir in 1395 is erroneous,
since there is no mention of the settlement in the source. The city
in the source, under the name of which historians meant "World", is
the Lithuanian city of Alytus. Historians had to set a new date for
the first mention of Mir. This date was May 28, 1434, when the Grand
Duke of Lithuania Sigismund Keistutovich presented the Mir court and
the surrounding lands to his colleague, Senka Gedygoldovich from
Vilna. And although the letter mentions only one curia (courtyard)
of a certain Demid, archaeological materials from the beginning of
the 15th century are found not only on the territory of the modern
town of Mir, but also on the other side of the Miranka River,
exactly at the place where Mir Castle now rises. The remains of the
identified pre-castle buildings indicate that they were quite rich
for their time. So, in the cultural layer of the castle courtyard,
the remains of a stove made of pot tiles were found.
Senka,
dying childless, signed off the worldly possessions to his named
daughter Anna Butrimovna. But Anna never married and died young. In
1476, she rewrote the property to her aunt, Senka's wife Milohna
Kezgailovna, and Milohna, in turn, in 1490 signed off her
possessions to her relative Yuri Ilyinich, a young but very talented
pan.
Yuri was the son of Ivashka Ilyinich, the headman of
Vitebsk and Smolensk. For the first time, Ilyinich appeared in the
World only in 1495. The worldly possessions were the subject of
disputes with the court marshal Litovovor Khreptovich, the very next
year a trial was held in Grodno in favor of Khreptovich. Litigation
continued after the military campaign in 1497 in Moldavia, but this
time Ilyinich also failed to get Mirskie lovy. Ilyinich won the
rights to Mirshchina only 27 years later, after the death of a
powerful rival neighbor. In 1522, holding the position of Lithuanian
marshal and Brest headman and using the ignorance of the heirs of
Litovor, and possibly even bribing witnesses, Ilyinich, through the
court, finally receives the rights to the Mir Castle and these
lands.
Now it is difficult to determine what motives the magnate was
guided by when deciding to create a fortified residence. Almost all
researchers of the history of the Mir Castle constantly raise the
question of what made far from the richest and not the most
influential constable of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania take up
large-scale construction. It is also intriguing that Ilyinich
started a grandiose construction on the slope of his life. In
addition, until the 16th century, private stone castles were not
built at all in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and even very wealthy
lords usually managed with wooden fortified courtyards.
Among
scientists, disputes are still ongoing about the purpose of the Mir
Castle. The pretext for the construction of the castle could have
been wars with the Grand Duchy of Moscow, raids by the Crimean
Tatars, difficult relations with neighbors, their own aggressiveness
or desire to become famous, to receive the title of count of the
Holy Roman Empire, or simply the position of a Lithuanian court
marshal. However, the construction could also be based on an
economic component - the castle is located at the junction of three
roads that already existed here in those days, and such an
arrangement gave great benefits.
Many researchers associate
the construction of the castle with considerations of prestige and
Ilyinich's desire to assert himself. For more than two decades, he
led litigation for the right to own the Mir estates, which ended in
favor of the Ilyinichs only in 1522, when the construction of the
Mir Castle probably began. By this time, Ilyinich had become a
prosperous tycoon and received profits from the management of the
Beresteisky and Kovno elderships and castles, and also took
advantage of a large sum of money in 10,000 gold ducats from the
zemstvo treasurer Abram Ezafovich Rabichkovich.
Causes
controversy and the date of construction of the castle. The castle
was first mentioned in 1527 in the Lithuanian Metrics, however, the
architectural features of the Mir Castle show that it was founded no
earlier than 1510. Mikhail Tkachev believed that the castle was
built in 1506-1510, there are also construction dates - the end of
the 15th - the beginning of the 16th centuries, and 1508-1510
(according to A. Snezhko). Most historians agree that there was no
castle in Mir at the very end of the 15th century. The fact that the
castle was built no earlier than the 1520s is indirectly indicated
by the fact that in 1524 the Church of St. Michael was built near
Volkovysk, the plasticity of the architectural details of which is
very similar to the architectural design of the castle. Some
features of the architecture of the Mir Castle (“crystal vaults”)
are also evidence that the castle was founded no earlier than in the
1510s. On the official website of the Mir Castle, the date of
foundation is indicated in the 1520s.
In the original
version, the castle was not completed; the defensive buildings along
the southern and eastern walls, as well as the northwestern tower,
remained unfinished. Nevertheless, according to researchers, at that
time there was nothing on the entire territory of Belarus, both in
size and grandeur, that could compare with the Mir Castle
The architecture of the Mir Castle of the 16th century had features
of Belarusian late Gothic. The castle was made in the form of a square
building with powerful towers protruding along the edges, about 25
meters high. All towers were planned as independent defense units. The
thickness of the walls reached 3 m and a height of about 13 m. Numerous
dungeons of the castle created a complex system of auxiliary premises,
which, on the whole, were several times larger than the above-ground
part of the building. All the towers of the castle are made in the same
way: a 4-sided base, an 8-sided dome, tapering upwards.
The
square plan of the towers and their placement behind the outer line of
the walls made it possible to fire at the enemy not only directly, but
also along the walls. At that time, it was the most progressive defense
system, and only the imperfection of firearms forced the use of
traditional methods of defense with bows, crossbows, stones, resin and
pitch.
The construction of the castle was carried out in several
stages. In the first decade of the 16th century, walls and towers were
erected, and a one-story brick dwelling was built in the southwestern
section of the courtyard. By now, only separate sections of the
foundations have remained from it, traces of the dressing of the masonry
of the walls of this building with the walls of the castle, as well as
nests from laying the ends of the floor beams on the southern castle
wall.
The decoration of the castle was based on the contrast of
red brick and pink plaster. The outer walls are ornamented with curbs,
weights, niches, belts, semi-columns.
During the construction of
the walls, three-layer masonry was used: the outer part of the walls was
laid out of brick interspersed with boulder stone, and the inner part
was made of small stone and brick fragments filled with lime mortar.
However, the foresight of Yuri Ilyinich did not allow "to make a castle
out of just a toy" - if necessary, the castle could provide a tangible
rebuff to the invaders. All four towers were erected in such a way that
it was convenient to conduct flanking fire along the walls and destroy
the enemy on the outskirts of them. Each tower had five combat tiers
with loopholes and a complex system of internal passages. Two fireplaces
have been preserved since the first stage of construction. The first one
is located on the first tier of the entrance tower, it was used for
heating by guards who were on duty around the clock. In the same channel
with it there was a second fireplace - in the chapel on the second tier
of the entrance tower.
During the first period of construction,
the construction of the Mir Castle was not completed. The upper tiers of
the northwestern tower, the castle walls[39], as well as capital
buildings in the southern and western parts of the castle courtyard,
which could have been intended for housing the garrison and servants,
remained unfinished. According to the old tradition, one of the towers,
most likely the southwestern one, was assigned to the feudal lord. This
is evidenced by the original decor of the tower: in the niches on its
facades, decorative multi-colored compositions, the so-called
“occasional” paintings, were revealed, which could be created in honor
of the receipt in 1555 by the last owner from the Ilinich family of the
title of Count of the Holy Roman Empire.
The castle was built by
the population of Mirshchyna and peasants from other possessions of Yuri
Ilyinich. Brick workshops were built in the villages of Propashi and
Birbashi. Limestone was delivered from the village of Sverzhen. Hundreds
of cubic meters of field stone were brought to one place, where the
building material was hewn, sorted by size and color.
The second
stage of construction took place in the 1520s-1530s, when a one-story
building with a wide basement was added to the southern and eastern
walls, which occupied almost half of the courtyard area.
At the
third stage of construction (the second half of the 16th century - the
first half of the 17th century), two more floors were erected above the
one-story building.
Yuri Ilyinich died in 1526, having transferred his possessions to his
four sons. His son Shchasny (Felix) survived all the brothers and became
the owner of the inheritance. He was married to Sophia Radziwill, the
daughter of Jan the Bearded, with whom he had a son, also Yuri. The
uncle of the latter, Nikolai Radziwill the Black, sent young Ilyinich to
the court of Emperor Ferdinand I. As a result of this trip, on July 10,
1553, Yuri, as the owner of a huge stone castle, received the title of
count.
So the dream of Yuri Ilyinich-grandfather came true,
although his family died out. Yuri was not married, he wrote off all his
wealth to the son of Nikolai Radziwill the Black Nikolai Christopher
Radziwill Sirotka. After the death of Nikolai Cherny in 1564, Yuri
Ilyinich became the guardian of his children. Anticipating an early
death, on August 25, 1568, he adopts Radziwill the Orphan, draws up a
will and dies exactly one year after he had a prophetic dream, in 1569.
Shortly after the death of the last of the extinct Ilyinich family,
Nikolai Radziwill Sirotka was officially recorded as the owner of Mir
and Belaya. These estates were handed over to him by the Novogrudok
carrier Grigory Tarasevich, and on behalf of Nikolai the Orphan, the old
Radziwill servant Maciej Kavyachinsky, known in the history of the
Reformation as a philanthropist of Simon Budny, received them. Thus,
from 1569 and for three centuries the castle belonged to the Radziwills.
In the 1580s-1590s, at the third stage of the construction of the
castle, a three-story palace was added to the northern and eastern
walls, and the towers were adapted for housing. Most likely at the
initial stage, Jan Maria Bernardoni supervised the construction work.
The castle walls - northern and eastern - became the outer walls of the
palace. Some of the loopholes were walled up, and large window openings
were made at the level of the second and third floors. The wooden
covering of the first floor was replaced with cylindrical bricks, and
the transverse walls of the first floor were reinforced by lining them
with bricks on both sides. On the outside of the castle, outbuildings
were built. A castle chapel was built in the entrance tower. The
southern wall of the unfinished southern building was crowned with a
gallery with loopholes, which, however, were poorly adapted to the needs
of defense. A horseshoe-shaped wall of the forefront (barbican) was
erected in front of the entrance tower. The northwestern tower was
completed, the completed floors of which, thanks to the arched arches
above the windows, are very similar in volumetric solution to the
completion of the southeastern tower.
The castle became the
administrative center of the Mir county and the princely country
residence. The walls of the palace and the towers were plastered and
painted pink to match the red brick wall. Window and doorways were made
of gray sandstone brought from Galicia. In the basements and on the
first floor there were utility rooms and storerooms, on the second floor
there were the administration of the Mir county, the castle court, the
office, and the third floor was intended for the owners.
Accordingly, the interiors of the chambers of different levels were
decorated. In the cellars, the floor was paved, the walls were not
plastered, there were only primitive fireplaces from the heating
devices, the carpentry was also very simple. On the first and second
floors, the floor was laid out with ceramic tiles, on the second floor,
wooden floors were later laid out. The walls were plastered and
whitewashed, stoves were installed, and on the first floor they were
lined, as a rule, with unglazed tiles, and on the second - glazed, most
often green. But the third floor shone with all the colors, dazzlingly
shone with gilding. In the descriptions there are references to French
painting on the walls (on painted friezes), coffered ceilings with
carvings, coloring and gilding, parquet floors, richly decorated
fireplaces and stoves, decorated with glazed tiles (multicolor, four or
more colors each) of various shapes in depending on the installation
location. Doors made of precious woods were inserted into beautifully
profiled stone frames. The composition of the interiors was wonderfully
complemented by rich furniture, works of art and other interior design
items. The private quarters of Prince Radziwill the Orphan were
upholstered in black Moravian cloth, for which black became the main
color in devotion to the ideals of the counter-reformation and sadness
from the death of his beloved wife. There were special chambers in the
castle - "skarbtsy" for storing valuables.
Much attention was
paid to carving, especially stone carving. The oak beams of the ceiling
were covered with skillful carvings or painted with paints that imitated
carvings. Paintings on the walls were made using the grisaille
technique, imitating sculptural relief. The sgraffito technique was used
in the processing of the outer walls.
From the Italian
Renaissance, the rhythmic placement of doors and windows, the same
number of floors, the space of stairs are adopted. But there are still
elements of the Gothic - the old system of walls, rib vaults, complex
transitions along the towers and galleries. At the same time, simple
forms, light walls, large windows of the palace ended up outside the
defensive ramparts, and rich decor: balconies, galleries, porches with
carved balusters, carved openings, forged doors, lanterns - in the
courtyard. All these architectural and artistic solutions make it
possible to speak of the Mir Castle as a relatively rare and most
striking example of the Belarusian Renaissance, which combined features
of late Gothic and Renaissance. Little remains of the palace decoration
from the time of Orphan: a few stone profiles from windows and many
pieces of tiles from stoves excavated by archaeologists.
In the
tower above the gate on the second tier there is a chapel of St.
Christopher, and the clock was installed on the third. From the chapel,
an exit was made directly to the princely chambers to the north and the
battle galleries to the south. A new combat gallery was built on the
unfinished southern wall, and the old western one was also remodeled.
The whole building as a whole actually turned into a palace.
Since the old walls ceased to be an insurmountable barrier to more
advanced artillery, earthen ramparts with bastions at the corners of the
so-called Dutch type, cut by ditches with water, began to perform the
main defensive function. The height of the shaft reached 9 meters and
defensive bastions were placed at its corners. The effectiveness of
earthen fortifications was supplemented by an artificially created
watering system. The shaft framed a moat filled with water thanks to the
Castle Moat and the Miranka River, which made it possible to create a
cascade of ponds with water mills on dams. The presence of the water
surface enriched the landscape with an artistic composition with an
expressive reflection of the castle in the water.
Near the castle
at the beginning of the XVII century. a garden of the southern Italian
Renaissance type was laid out. The area of the garden was small - about
2 hectares. Trees were first planted mainly of local species (apple,
pear, cherry), after which oranges, citrons, figs, myrtle, cypress,
boxwood, Italian walnut, mahogany and laurel trees grew. The Italian
garden was separated from the surrounding area by a strip of lindens and
canals, and a carpet of flowers was turned to the palace windows.
Through a chain of ponds, reflecting the castle in their mirrors, one
could get to the manor.
A farm is being laid to the east of the
castle with numerous outbuildings and rooms for servants, and a
menagerie is being set up three kilometers from Mir. Now an oak tree has
been preserved here, where, according to legend, there was the center of
the menagerie, from which clearings-beams diverged for circular
shelling; there were pens around where animals were kept. The creation
of the manor made it possible to independently provide the castle with
provisions and in fact turned the residence into a self-sufficient
economic unit. The castle itself after perestroika became one of the
most expressive examples of private castle architecture in Belarus.
The documents preserved the name of the master who supervised the
construction work. By order of Radziwill the Orphan, in 1575 master
Martin Zabarovsky was given a house for housing in Mir, where at that
time the church of St. Nicholas, which had common features with the
architecture of the Mir Castle.
The peaceful life of the castle was interrupted by the Russian-Polish
war (1654-1667). In 1655 the Mir Castle was for the first time
devastated by the Cossacks I. Zolotarenko and the troops of the Governor
A. Trubetskoy. In the same year, Boguslav Radziwill led a Swedish
detachment to Mir to capture the owner of the city, Mikhail Kazimir
Radziwill, who did not join the pro-Swedish coalition. The Swedes
stormed the castle and the city, burned the manor, broke the mills,
drained the ponds, and destroyed the castle.
Due to the
preoccupation of the country with confusion and robberies, the castle
also suffered from domestic soldiers. So, in 1660, Radziwill's
emissaries compiled a "register of harm done in the county of Mirsky by
people from the Turets estate." It can be seen that the damage caused
was quite large, since the trial in this case lasted more than a century
and ended only in 1789.
The inventory of the castle, compiled on
August 14, 1660, notes that “the castle requires care, flows everywhere,
windows, doors, benches are rarely found anywhere, in all the chambers
of the upper and middle ones, as well as in the cellars there are no
doors and windows ...”, and the princely manor and the "Italian garden"
were burned.
The first renovation work in the history of the
castle began in the early 1680s under the leadership of Katarzyna
Radziwiłł from the Sobieski family after the death of her husband
Michael Casimir Radziwiłł. The bulk of the work fell on the period
1681-1688, and the inventory of 1688 already describes the repaired
castle. During this time, almost all the windows and doors to the palace
were restored, covered with the roof of the tower, the premises were
brought into proper condition and the manor was restored.
In the
summer of 1686, the worldly watchmaker Yutsevich launched the pendulum
of the repaired castle clock, which, however, was destroyed during the
Northern War, leaving "a large wheel and another smaller one and a
spring with a round plaque on it."
After the restoration, the Mir
Castle retained its original stylistic acquisitions of the Gothic and
Renaissance times, and the damaged structural parts of the castle were
simplified during the repair, or not restored at all.
According to inventory data for 1688, various outbuildings were
located on the podzamchische surrounded by ramparts (“a stable with a
carriage and a cart, all covered with shingles”, as well as a “small
vegetable garden”). Near the gate there was a guardhouse, where there
was a stove "made of white tiles, brought up, three benches and a
window." In the castle there was a princely stable with hay and oats
prepared in reserve, a brewery, a bathhouse, utility cellars. A high
porch "with a ladder and painted railings" opened the way to the
numerous chambers and halls of the palace. The sun peered in through the
colored glass of the windows, inserted into wonderfully made tin and
wooden frames, and illuminated the parquet floor, tall stoves made of
multi-colored tiles, hammered copper candlesticks, glorious Korelichi
carpets (“trellises”), expensive weapons on the walls.
The
inventory preserved a description of the room “His Grace the Prince”,
according to him, the room “leads to oak doors with a new lock and
galvanized curtains. It has two windows with French glass in a tin
frame, eighteen rods in each window, curtains, latches, galvanized
shutters ... There is a new glazed stove made of multi-colored tiles,
with eagles, a stone open fireplace, a round table made of linden, two
benches, one low bench , two painted shelves, new flooring and a freshly
wood-panelled ceiling.”
Thus, the inventory of 1688 shows the Mir
Castle in the 17th-18th centuries. as a luxurious palace and park
complex, where the features of a military fortification and the splendor
and grandeur of a palace building were successfully combined. However,
economic devastation did not allow the castle to return to its former
luxury. The war showed that the bastion fortification was of little use,
and therefore it was not taken into account. The defensive tower in the
middle of the south wall is used for hay storage. At the palace, the
stone carved plank is not restored, it is replaced with a simple brick
one and plastered.
The Northern War for many years stopped the restoration of the
castle. In April 1706, the army of Charles XII captured and plundered
the city of Mir, and on April 27, after artillery shelling, the castle
was stormed and burned. The losses of the castle were even greater than
in the last war. The destruction is evidenced by the detailed
description of the type of building in the inventory of 1719: the
devastated rooms of the courtyard buildings, the walls sooty with fire,
the absence of doors and windows, the roof on the towers was partially
destroyed, etc.: “all the chambers are destroyed and empty, in all there
are neither doors nor iron, also there is not a single window ... All
the officers, some with shingles, others are covered with tiles ... ".
Archival documents of 1706-1720 did not record a thorough
restoration of the Mir Castle. Nevertheless, minor work was still
carried out on it: according to the inventory of 1719, simple plaster
appeared on the windows instead of various frames, and some of them were
simply bricked up or boarded up, the roof of the palace and towers was
partially covered with shingles and tiles, the interior part (mainly
courtyard buildings) was still in a devastated state. Only in 1720,
after the death of Karol's husband Stanisław Radziwill, Anna Ekaterina
Radziwill began vigorous efforts to restore the castle, at which time
sources indicate that money was allocated to repair the windows of the
castle and purchase the necessary building materials. By 1722, the
building of a new manor near the castle, a mill and a stable were
completely rebuilt, and new windows and doors were inserted in the
complex itself; the roof was partially restored on the palace and
towers, and a wooden gate in the main tower. During the restoration,
they focused on a significant alteration of the interior, which led to
stylistic changes in the castle. During the restoration work, features
of the Baroque style were introduced into the appearance of the palace.
This concerned mainly the interiors. So, if the place of the window
openings did not correspond to the baroque composition of the interior,
they were simply combed and transferred. For the first time, 17
portraits are indicated among various objects.
The former luxury
of the castle was returned by its new owner - Prince Mikhail Kazimir
Radziwill Rybonka. Instead of the same type of premises, a suite of
halls of different sizes appears, for which the internal partitions are
redone, the direction of the stairs is changed. The Main, Portrait and
Dance Halls appear, which are decorated with oak parquet floors, gilded
painted and carved ceilings, luxurious furniture made by local
craftsmen, tapestries, paintings, porcelain and faience products,
partially made at Radziwill manufactories. In all chambers there were
always stoves and a fireplace, a stucco ceiling with gilding, parquet in
small and large squares, panel doors with an internal French lock. In
total, the palace had sixteen fireplaces and seventeen stoves of various
shapes. By 1738, restoration work was completed; the consequences of the
fire that broke out in the castle in September 1738 were also quickly
eliminated.
The restoration also concerned the adjacent garden,
in which, in the description, about 400 rare trees were noted, which
were grown in barrels in a greenhouse built of logs, and exposed in the
summer to the open air.
To date, only fragments of decorative
plaster on the window slopes have been preserved from the baroque
decoration elements in the Mir Castle.
In general, the function
of housing at that time began to be performed by a wooden manor house,
located on the territory of the manor and often mentioned in
inventories. This corresponded to the requirements and lifestyle of that
time, when huge stone castles were of little use for everyday living and
were used mainly for large events, and time in the family circle was
spent in a small cozy wooden tent.
The next owner of the castle, the son of Rybonka, Prince Karol
Stanislav Radziwill Pane Kohanku, after his marriage in 1753, was
estranged from his father and in 1754-1762 he lived in the Mir Castle,
arranging luxurious balls and hunting fun here. A description of the
celebration of the New Year of 1761, which lasted from December 23 to
January 4 of the following year, has been preserved.
Pane
Kohanku's riots aroused the indignation of the gentry, the prince soon
found himself in exile, and his numerous estates were leased to
creditors to collect princely debts. The uncontrollable plunder of
wealthy farms began. For almost 15 years, a certain Grabovsky held the
Mir county and enriched himself significantly on this.
Details of
former interiors are given by the Inventory of 1778, compiled after the
return of Karol Radziwill from emigration. In the main hall there were
two oak doors, a round stove made of white tiles, a French fireplace,
over which stucco was gilded, a brick stove, and on one side of gilded
tiles, oak parquet, laid out in large checkered tables. In the Portrait
Hall with six unglazed windows, the parquet was small oak, the stove was
made of gilded coffee tiles, and the collapsed ceiling was decorated
with gilded stucco.
Gypsies took root in Mir itself: in 1778, the
prince introduced the title of Gypsy king and, with his charter,
approved the tradesman Jan Martinkiewicz as king of Gypsies. The Gypsy
head of the GDL was given the right to conduct all gypsy affairs and the
right to judge the gypsies. Thus Mir was declared the unofficial capital
of the Gypsies.
After the death of Pane Kohanku in 1790, all his hereditary
possessions passed to his nephew, Prince Dominic Hieronymus.
In
April 1792, the troops of the Russian Empire entered Belarus, and in
June they defeated the corps of troops of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania,
led by Yuditsky, near Mir. During the Kosciuszka Uprising, the troops of
Tadeusz Kosciuszka fought off the royal army in Mir Castle. After a
siege and shelling, the castle was taken by storm.
At this time,
the castle fell into decay, which is recorded in detail by the inventory
of that time. So, the inventories of 1778 and 1794 differ only in the
record of the number of broken glass in the windows and broken doors:
“The portrait hall, it has six windows without glass, is all devastated,
the ceiling with French stucco has completely crumbled.” The description
of the greenhouse in the Italian garden does not differ from the general
condition: “The roof is partially straightened with straw, the rest is
covered with shingles, quite old, supported on props alone, twenty-six
windows with completely broken glass in the wall from the garden.”
When compiling the last known inventory of the castle in 1805, it
was said about the third floor of the palace: “there are two halls,
fourteen chambers, of which eight are large, four are smaller, and two
completely collapsed - only walls. In the halls and in twelve chambers
the ceilings are plaster, mostly fallen down. The floor in six chambers
is plank, and the rest are completely without floors.
Dominic Radzwill, who during the Patriotic War of 1812 took the side
of Napoleon, died in France in 1813
Under the walls of the castle
on July 9-14, 1812, fierce battles took place between the rearguard of
the 2nd Russian army of Bagration - the cavalry of General Platov and
the French cavalry of Marshal Davout. Bagration ordered Platov to delay
the French as long as possible in order to give the main forces a break
in Nesvizh. The Cossacks of General Platov, with the help of cavalry,
managed to detain the vanguard of the French army, under the command of
the Emperor's brother Jerome Bonaparte. “The case of the Platov Cossacks
under Mir” was the first serious skirmish on the battlefield in the war
of 1812, Bagration’s troops rested for two days near Nesvizh and calmly
reached Slutsk. The battle under Mir was reflected in art: in 1912, the
Kiev artist V.V. Mazurovsky painted the painting “The Case of Platov’s
Cossacks under the World”, which is now in the Panorama Museum “Battle
of Borodino”.
The Mir Castle was briefly noted in the diary of
the Polish general Kalachkovsky, who was moving with the French troops
behind Bagration: "a castle near Mir, the ruins of which are still
preserved."
On November 11, 1812, a battle took place under the
walls of the castle between the army of Admiral Chichagov and a
scattered group of soldiers and officers of the French army; Chichagov's
army burned the Mir Castle, blew up the powder storehouse in the
northeast tower; the palace was plundered and burned, the outer bastion
fortifications were damaged.
After the death of D. Radziwill, his estates were divided into two
parts by the imperial order of March 17, 1814. One part, together with
Mir and Nesvizh, was received by the son of Dominik's former guardian
Anthony Radziwill, the second - by Dominik's daughter Stefania, who in
1828 married the tsar's adjutant Lev Petrovich Wittgenstein, the son of
the hero of the Patriotic War, to whom, after the death of Stefania in
1832, the rights to lock.
Meanwhile, the situation of the castle
was deteriorating. When in 1827 the tsarist government began to collect
information about ancient monuments in the western provinces, the
Nesvizh administration sent a short answer: “Mir Castle is now
completely destroyed and abandoned, not inhabited by anyone, belongs to
Anthony Radziwill.” The first measurement of the castle was also made,
which, however, has not survived to our time. In 1830, a laconic
inventory of the Radziwiłł Masa records the sad state of the castle. On
the plan of the Mir County of 1830, the decline of the castle is clearly
visible: the roads go past the building, and even the paths do not lead
to the castle gate.
Litigation between the Wittgensteins and
Anthony Radziwill ended only in 1846, the Mir possessions, by decision
of a special commission, passed to Leo Wittgenstein. According to the
will of the latter from 1853, Peter Wittgenstein was to take possession
of the castle, but immediately transfer it to his sister Maria, for whom
he was recorded in a marriage contract with Prince Chlodwig of
Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst, who was later Chancellor of the German Empire
in 1894-1900.
The castle itself was in severe decline. As noted
in the "Geographical Dictionary of the Kingdom of Poland and other
Slavic countries", in 1885 "the only inhabitant of the castle was the
watchman, who lived in a tower more or less adapted for life."
In
the middle of the century, the castle was under the threat of complete
destruction. In 1860, the Vilna Courier newspaper published a letter
from the poet Vladislav Syrokomly, which reported on plans to destroy
the monument. But the catastrophe was avoided, soon in the same
newspaper there appeared a letter of justification from Matej Yamont,
the general administrator of Wittgenstein's possessions, in which he
assured that the walls of the castle had not touched and would not touch
the pick.
In 1870, temporary roofs were made on four towers, with
the exception of the exploded northeastern one, which is now considered
the first example of the conservation of an architectural object in
Belarus as an ancient monument. However, archival documents,
photographic materials of the 1920s-1930s, as well as numerous
testimonies of researchers from 1915-1938 show the presence of rather
large architectural and artistic losses incurred by the castle during
the 19th century.
The new owners of the castle, the German
princes of Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst, rented out its territory. One of
the tenants, Anthony Putyata, planted luxurious gardens with walking
alleys and paths near the castle, but the tenant’s “flower” dreams did
not come true: having spent all his savings, Putyata leaves the World.
According to the Russian law of 1887, foreign citizens could not own
land on the territory of the Russian Empire. Therefore, the daughter of
Leo Wittgenstein, Maria Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst, was forced to sell
her huge land fund of a million acres of land.
The first printed images of the Mir Castle date back to the middle of
the century. In the book of F. M. Sabeshchansky, published in Warsaw in
Polish in 1849, along with the drawing of the castle, its first
description as an architectural monument, compiled by the Warsaw
architect Boleslav Podchaszynsky, appeared. Podchashinsky was the first
to notice different styles in the architecture of the castle and studied
the Mir Castle so well that all reputable publications used its
architectural sketch until the beginning of the 20th century. His
father, a well-known professor of architecture at the Vilna University,
Karol Podchashinsky, after the closure of this educational institution
by the tsarist authorities, got a job as a housekeeper in a household
near Nesvizh.
Four years later, Vladislav Syrokomlya dedicates
several pages to the Mir Castle in the book Traveling Through My Former
Outskirts. There is also printed a romantic drawing of the castle, made
by a friend of the poet, artist Kanuty Rusetsky.
In the late
1860s, the Mir Castle displayed the famous graphic artist, landscape and
architectural monument painter Napoleon Orda. The castle was painted to
match the romantic elegies of the century: on the top of the hill,
against the background of a dark sky, the jagged outline of a
dilapidated castle, and below - an idyllic scene with a bridge, wooden
fences, a hut under a thatched roof, a cheerful horse, weary travelers
on the bridge and a lady with a child on walk under a spreading tree. In
the depth behind the castle one can see an orchard. The drawing of the
Horde is one of the finest works of the artist's rich heritage in terms
of mood. It is not surprising that some researchers of the Mir Castle
took the drawing literally as a document and tried to restore the tower
battlements and multi-tiered loopholes of the walls, which the castle
never had.
The sale of the Wittgenstein property caused an unprecedented stir
among the Russian aristocracy. In 1891, these lands were bought by the
chief Cossack ataman of the Don Cossacks, Prince Nikolai Ivanovich
Svyatopolk-Mirsky, for a significant amount of 414,000 silver rubles:
for this, he pledged almost all of his property in the Novgorod and
Podolsk provinces. Perhaps the prince was attracted by the consonance of
the name of the place with his last name: although the
Svyatopolk-Mirskys were considered nobles of the Minsk province, they
had nothing to do with the castle, nevertheless, it was Mir that was
planned to be made the ancestral nest of the family.
The new
owner of the castle did not restore the monument: for his residence, he
built a new palace on the east side of the castle, which burned down in
1914. The palace was built in neoclassical forms: a two-storey stone
manor house with an office building, agricultural buildings were nearby,
and between the new palace and the castle there was an English-style
landscape park. In 1898, a new pond was dug on the site of overgrown
reservoirs, for which bastion fortifications were dug up on this side.
At the same time, the apple orchard that grew on this site was
ruthlessly cut down just during the flowering period. The family
chapel-tomb of Svyatopolk-Mirsky was built in the park. Nikolai
Ivanovich Svyatopolk-Mirsky died right there on his estate Zamirye on
the night of July 14-15, 1898 at the age of 65. The prince's possessions
first passed to his wife, Princess Cleopatra Mikhailovna, and then to
his son Mikhail.
At this time, interest in the Mir Castle as a
monument of ancient culture is growing. In 1915, in the sixth volume of
Antiquities, an article by Y. Iodkovsky about the castle in Mir was
published with a large number of photographs, drawings and measured
drawings. Iodkovsky's article played an important role not only in the
scientific study of the architectural monument, but also in saving the
monument.
Mikhail Nikolaevich Svyatopolk-Mirsky, who had
previously served in the Russian Embassy in London, decided to restore
the old castle, not the new palace that burned down in 1914. Work on the
restoration of the castle began in 1922 and lasted 16 years. During the
period 1922-1929, the southwestern tower was completely restored, the
masonry of the walls of the eastern building of the palace. After the
economic depression from 1934 to 1939. five spans of the eastern wing of
the palace and two towers were restored: the southeastern and part of
the northwestern.
Of all the halls designed by the Warsaw
architect Teodor Bursh, only the Slonovaya was completed. Water and
electricity were supplied to the castle, sewerage and a telephone
worked. In general, the implementation of the author's intentions was
far from literal. So, at the suggestion of the student-architect Stefan
Pysevich, the gaps in the eastern wall were built up with a twisted
staircase with a balcony, called “Stefan's staircase”. A small balcony
was arranged on the southern outer castle wall, which became a favorite
resting place for the prince. At the same time, the surviving fragments
and ruins of the castle were considered for the first time as a cultural
value.
Prince Mikhail did not have a family and heirs, in 1937 he
adopted his nephew Alexander Dmitrievich, who in 1938 passed the castle.
Alexander, having a Romanian passport, in order to obtain Polish
citizenship in the same year married a Polish woman, 22-year-old
Countess Katarzyna Bnin-Bninskaya. With the arrival of the Red Army on
the lands of Western Belarus in September 1939, they were arrested, but
thanks to diplomatic ties they avoided deportation.
In 1939, a production artel was placed within the walls of the
castle. During the Great Patriotic War in 1942, there was a ghetto in
the castle, where the Nazis drove about 1800 local Jews. A resistance
group was created among the prisoners, and on August 9, 1942, more than
250 Jews escaped, and three days later the people who remained in the
ghetto were shot by the Nazis in the forest on the site of the Italian
Garden.
At the time of the arrival of the Red Army, only about 40
Jews remained in Mir. In memory of the Jews of Mir who died during the
Holocaust, the Jewish National Fund, together with the municipality of
Jerusalem, planted a forest area in northern Jerusalem - Mir Forest. The
first 1,000 trees were planted in the early 1980s at the expense of Rosa
Zwick, who escaped the destruction with her husband.
After the
liberation of Mir in July 1944, local fire victims found shelter in
habitable premises, the last family moved out of the castle in 1962. In
the 1960s, the castle was left without attention, only some rooms were
used as storage rooms.
In the 1950s, the architect A. Ya.
Mityatin worked in the castle. In 1968, Special Scientific and
Restoration Workshops were established, one of the first objects of
which was the Mir Castle. the study of the monument began with the aim
of its restoration; in 1971, temporary conservation of the walls was
carried out.
In October 1978, the Decree of the Council of
Ministers of the Byelorussian SSR appeared on the restoration of the Mir
Castle and the construction of an art vocational school in the village
of Mir. A complex group was created to study the architectural and
historical ensemble in Mir and solve the problems of its preservation,
the result of the work of the group in 1981 was a project for the
restoration and use of the Mir Castle.
The first version of the reconstruction of the castle with its
adaptation to accommodate an art vocational institution was proposed in
the early 1980s by architects O. Atas, S. Veremeychik, V. Kalnin and
archaeologist O. Trusov.
Questions of the restoration of the Mir
Castle were reported in October 1982 at a regional conference of the
Soviet Committee of ICOMOS (the republics of the Soviet Baltic and the
Byelorussian SSR) in the city of Klaipeda. On July 25, 1983, a solemn
laying of a brick was held in the southern wall of the castle with the
date of the beginning of the restoration of the monument. This honorable
mission was entrusted to the construction team "Spadchyna" of Grodno
University
On April 12, 1993, with great solemnity, in the
presence of the leaders of independent Belarus, the first exposition was
opened in the restored southwestern tower, and following the results of
the work in the same year, the Mir Castle was awarded a diploma of
distinction by the prestigious International Organization "Europa
Nostra". Further, the scientific concept of the restoration and use of
the castle was reported to UNESCO experts who visited the Mir Castle in
order to determine whether the object in question complies with the
criteria of the UNESCO World Cultural and Natural Heritage List.
In 1987, the Mir Castle was transferred to the balance of the National
Art Museum of the Republic of Belarus, which began to create a concept
for the future museum exposition. In 2000, the concept was reviewed and
approved at the collegium of the Ministry of Culture; in August of the
same year it was published in the newspaper "Culture".
Part of the castle was adapted to accommodate a hotel. At the same
time, in order to increase the number of places for living, the third
tier was divided into two levels. Thus, 10 hotel rooms were obtained, of
which 4 are doubles, 1 is an apartment. The hotel premises are equipped
with intelligent home systems, while the level of equipment of the
monument with intellectual systems is the highest in the Republic of
Belarus and can only be compared with similar indicators of the Europe
Hotel in Minsk. This allows holding events at the highest level on the
basis of the Mir Castle.
The adaptation of the Mir Castle to the
new conditions of life led to original solutions for its engineering
equipment. But it is impossible to place technical equipment in the
original interiors, so the entire technical part of the complex is
located in an additional underground extension.
In 2012, the Mir
castle complex was visited by 275.5 thousand people, which allowed it to
take the fourth place in popularity among the country's museums.
The implemented restoration project caused criticism among
specialists. One of the criticisms was the assertion that the castle
began to look brand new, almost a souvenir product; and instead of the
original surface of the plastered parts, an acrylic surface appeared,
painted in pink. Another point of criticism related to the environment
of the monument: the landscaping elements (paving slabs, fence, entrance
pavilion, paths) do not correspond to the spirit of the monument. Caused
criticism and the restoration of the chapel-tomb of Svyatopolk-Mirsky.
According to experts, the monument died out under a layer of acrylic,
and thus an almost commercial object was made.
The museum
exposition implemented in the Mir Castle also raised many questions
among specialists. One of the problems is that the halls were filled
with random objects and replicas (copies, reproductions, models of other
castles), which does not create a historical atmosphere of the monument.
Luxurious halls are filled with a large number of random and unnecessary
things, stylistically not related either to the interiors or to the
history of the castle itself.
In response, museum workers say
that the originals of those eras can only be obtained in very rare
cases, and that the amount of funding, almost entirely spent on the
restoration of the monument, does not allow buying expensive and rare
exhibits.
The castle is a square building with mighty towers protruding at the
corners, about 25 meters high. The fifth, western tower, is a gate
tower, and once had a drawbridge across a wide moat. The thickness of
the walls reached 3 meters at a height of about 13 meters.
In the
plastic design of the castle, expressive means typical of Belarusian
Gothic were used: Gothic masonry (alternating a poke and a spoon) with
embedded stones and the use of clinker bricks, dividing the walls with
plastered niches of various shapes, ornamental brick belts. The inner
planes of niches, rods and belts were plastered in white, which, in
combination with the dark red texture of the main field of brick walls
and dark spots of embrasures, greatly contributed to the expressiveness
of its architecture. Some researchers believe that the ornamental
decoration of the Mir Castle, as well as the ornament of folk clothes,
was intended to scare away evil spirits and protect the owners from evil
fate, powerful defensive devices are not emphasized, but, on the
contrary, seem to be relegated to the background.
Despite the
original appearance of the Mir Castle, according to its scheme, to a
certain extent, it resembles the brick castle-monasteries of Northern
Poland and the Baltic states and the monastic fortresses of Moldova and
Romania.
The walls of the Mir Castle are notable for the fact that they had
three tiers of battle. The lower part of the walls was cut through by
cannon loopholes of plantar combat; the middle tier at a height of 8 m
from the ground looked like a corridor-gallery about 2 m high,
connecting all the towers; the upper tier was a combat platform at the
very top of the wall. The walls ended with rectangular battlements;
machicolations are preserved on one of the walls.
The walls of
the castle were built on massive foundations about 4-4.5 meters deep.
The foundations are made of large stone with brick as a filler. The wall
consists of three layers - two outer layers, lined with mixed masonry,
between which a backfill is made with small stone and brick breakage on
lime test. The lower parts of the castle walls and towers are composed
of mixed masonry with a height of 1.2 to 7.3 meters. The upper parts of
the walls and towers are made of dark red brick, which has the name
Lithuanian. The predominant size of bricks is 10×15×30, weighing about 6
kg.
Along the perimeter of the walls, at a height of about 8
meters from the ground, there is an ornamental brick belt about 70 cm
wide from six rows of brickwork. The upper and lower rows are bricks
laid at the corner in the form of a traditional curb. Between them runs
a belt, whitewashed with lime, which stands out expressively against the
red background of the brick wall.
To achieve the expressiveness
of the composition, the builders actively used corrections for optical
illusions - curvatures: all the walls are slightly curved in plan.
On the section of the northern wall, two niches and a through hole
for water drainage were preserved, and the castle also had a latrine
(toilet), which was an ordinary bay window hanging over the outer gann
of the northern section of the western wall. The castle has preserved
and operates a system for discharging storm drains from the courtyard.
The emphasis in the decoration of the Mir Castle was placed on the
towers. The architectural processing of their facades is based on the
alternation of niches of various shapes and sizes (fresco paintings were
found in some of them), rods and ornamental belts. This technique was
widespread in Belarusian architecture of the 16th century (in the
pediments of the Synkovichi and Malomozheykovskaya churches).
All
towers have the same three-dimensional composition - the lower
tetrahedral part, on which the octahedral completion is placed. The
towers of the castle are structurally and stylistically close to each
other and, at the same time, each of them has its own individual
architectural appearance. The artistic perfection of the facade of the
castle is especially emphasized by the thoughtfulness and fusion of the
ornamental belts of the towers. They were erected in such a way that it
was convenient to conduct flanking fire along the wall strands. The
towers had fireplaces for fortification purposes. Most of the tower
loopholes were intended for firing from cannons. All towers are planned
as independent defense units.
The foundations of the towers are
made of stones, followed by mixed stone-brick and brickwork. The
thickness of the walls near the base is about 3 m, at the top 2.2 m. The
towers ended with machicolations.
Of all the towers of the Mir Castle, the entrance one is the most
interesting, bright and perfect. It is 25 meters high and stands on a
12×12 m foundation. The tower is decorated with ornamental belts and
decorative niches of various sizes and shapes, combining traditional
methods and means of designing local stone architecture: Old Russian
curbs and arched friezes, as well as niches. The chapel was located on
the second floor. Stone stairs began from below, going through the
thickness of the wall up to the fourth floor, opening an exit to each
tier of the battlefield. The tower ended with a belt of "barn windows".
There was an interesting system of blocking the entrance: the
passage to the entrance tower was raised 1.5 m above the surrounding
area. The only passage to the castle cut through the entire first floor
of the tower; it had two oak gates. In addition, the gate was
additionally protected by a gersa (which, however, is not mentioned in
written sources, so some researchers express doubts about its
existence)). It descended from the second floor and allowed you to
instantly close the entrance to the castle. To prevent attempts to
destroy the circuit system, a mashikul was made above the entrance - a
hole through which boiling water, resin, or stones were thrown onto the
attackers.
At the end of the XVI century. the gates were
additionally strengthened, a barbican was attached to them. In the
center of it, a gate opening was cut into two canvases. There was also a
combat gallery - a platform for shooters. In the middle of the barbican,
they dug a pit 2 m deep, which was closed by a special drawbridge. The
barbican existed until the end of the 19th century.
In the tower,
according to the description of the inventories of 1681 and 1688, there
was a prison, it consisted of two rooms: the first at the entrance was
called the Upper Prison, the second - “the cellar under the gate” (Lower
Prison). This division was in accordance with the punishment norms of
the Statute of 1588. The lower prison was considered a much heavier
punishment and was located in a cellar measuring 6 × 4.5 m and 2.7 m
high at a depth of 4 m from the level of the passage.
At the end
of the XVI century. a chapel was made in the overhead room, to which a
passage was made through the gallery on the northern fragment of the
western wall to the newly built northern palace building. The altar of
St. Christopher.
On the third floor of the tower there was a
large striking clock, the clock face with an arrow was placed on the
outer wall of the tower.
According to the inventory of the castle
in 1688, there were three iron cannons near the gate tower.
Of all the corner towers built in the 16th century, the southwestern
one has been almost completely preserved, which makes it possible to
study the planning system and the organization of the battle of all
floors. The foundation of the tower is a slightly skewed square 10 × 10
m in size with a laying depth of 4 m, made of boulders up to 1.5 m long.
The height of the tower is 23 m.
In the middle, the tower is
divided into five tiers. On the first floor there were seven cannon
loopholes that flanked the castle gates, the western and southern walls
with fire. A steep narrow stone staircase led to the second floor, where
six cannons stood. In the 20th century, large windows were made in place
of some loopholes. The ceiling of the second floor of the tower is
vaulted, and the remaining three floors are on beams. On the upper
floors there were loopholes designed for fire from cannons and handguns.
At the level of the fourth floor, the walls of the tower turn into an
"octagon". At the very top of the tower wall, in some places, “barn
windows” half-laid with bricks have been preserved.
For the
convenience of lifting up military supplies and ammunition, the
so-called "castle elevator" was designed in the tower. From the very top
of the tower from the center down to the stone ceiling of the third
tier, a cord-rope dropped over a beam or an iron roller. Openings were
made in the wooden ceilings, which were closed with folding doors. From
the castle courtyard, in turn, there was a device for delivering goods
to the third tier. The "Castle Elevator" has survived to our time and is
exhibited in the tower.
The remaining towers differ from the
southwestern one in the size of the foundations, the volume of the
premises and some details. All of them are very similar to each other in
terms of internal layout, volumetric and spatial solution and the
purpose of the premises.
The construction of the palace buildings of the castle had a
systematic character. The basement and first floor were used as
warehouses. The second was intended for servants, the third - for the
owners. The layout of the basement and the lower tiers of both wings of
the palace was a series of sections placed periodically. Cooking was
carried out in the castle itself, where a kitchen, a brewery and a
bakery were attached to the southern (from the side of the courtyard)
and western walls. From the outside, a stable was attached to the south
wall.
It is believed that the architectural and constructive
solutions of windows are gleaned from Italy. The windows were a single
string of one-color stained glass in a metal frame inserted into a stone
setting. Their mechanical use in the climatic conditions of Belarus
created additional problems of warming the premises, especially in the
upper chambers. The large size of the windows caused significant heat
losses, which they tried to compensate by installing a large number of
large stoves. In the spacious front rooms, additional stoves of a design
atypical for the Renaissance period with the placement of the firebox
from below were installed near the outer walls.
A system of
comfortable latrines (toilets) was created in the palace, located on the
third and second floors. The sewage was washed out of them through
vertical channels arranged in the walls and dumped for filtering into an
underground cesspool. In this regard, the sections between the northern
and eastern walls of the castle and the corresponding sections of the
earthen rampart were not used for walking. A pedestrian bridge was built
in the palace, passing from the second floor of the northern wing of the
palace to the gross passage.
To illuminate the palace, pendant
and wall lamps, large and small candlesticks were used, which were
installed on the floor and furniture. The arrangement and hanging of the
lamps were not constant; to prevent theft, they were stored in special
rooms and installed or hung out if necessary.
At the beginning of the XVII century. bastion fortifications made of
clay, coarse sand and earth were poured around the Mir Castle. They
looked like a powerful quadrangle measuring 170 × 150 m of the so-called
Dutch type, and became the first line of defense of the castle[36].
There is an opinion that in the corners there were not classical
bastions, but original platforms on which wooden towers were placed.
The northeastern bastion, the northern and partly eastern curtains,
4 m high, have survived to our time. Previously, earthen ramparts were
up to 9 m, in front of them there was a moat filled with water using a
system of ponds. One of the main shortcomings of the bastion
fortifications of the Mir Castle was the small height of the shaft,
which did not allow the castle to be closed from enemy shelling.
At the top of the rampart, no remains of an earthen parapet were
preserved. His role could be played by a wooden palisade or rows of
gabion baskets with loopholes for shooters and embrasures for guns.
The Mir Castle was built on a small hill at the confluence of the
Miranka and Zamkova rivers. The flat nature of the area determined the
laying of a fortification of the correct form: the 55-60-meter-long
strands of defensive walls create a courtyard-detinets close to a
square. At the corners of the castle, four flanking towers completely
protrude beyond the perimeter of the walls, the fifth gate-tower was
built in the middle of the western wall. The correct configuration of
the masonry created the best conditions for the defense of the walls
from the corner towers.
The general pattern of the fortification
of the original castle was as follows. At the distant approaches, the
enemy was held back by artillery placed on three corner towers; the
approaches to the walls were covered by palisades and a dry or
water-filled moat. Near the castle walls themselves, fire was fired from
handguns and hooks from the corner towers, machicolations and from the
loophole belt in the walls.
The defense of the castle was
concentrated in the towers, which were the real centers of the castle's
defense. The first, fourth and fifth floors were intended for shooters
from handguns, the second for the installation of heavy guns and
foglers, and the third for firing at a long distance. To place cannons
on the third floor, large loopholes were needed, therefore, up to this
level, the towers retain a tetrahedral shape. Further, the tower turns
into an octahedron, which made it possible to expand the area of fire
around the tower, covering the "dead zones" in front of the corners of
the tetrahedron.
The northeastern tower differs from the others,
in which the transition from a tetrahedron to an octahedron occurs at
the level of the third floor. This fact and its extremely rich
decoration is explained by the fact that the tower could be used as a
residential building. In the gate-tower, the first floor is occupied by
the passage of the gate, and on the second floor there is a chapel,
starting from the third floor, the tower turns into an octahedron. In
the tower, all combat levels were intended for shooters with handguns.
The defensive elements of the Mir Castle, in addition to their direct
purpose, played a significant role in the decorative design of the
building, they gave the castle festivity and solemnity.
Information about guns in Mir is very scarce. Researchers believe that
the cannons could be located in the loopholes, and in the gate tower
there were "3 iron cannons, unmounted." In the "Description of objects
in the mundane treasures" of 1636, a small cannon "spizhovoye delko"
with 30 cores, located in the southwestern tower, is mentioned. It is
known that in the arsenal there were 56 hooks, 20 "smaller" hooks, 8
hooks and 15 half-shots, 15 "mares", or "old-world pulgaks" (semi-guns).
Most of the weapons came to the castle under Nikolai Radziwill Sirotka,
but some of the weapons could have been stored in the castle since the
first half of the 16th century. Gakovnitsy remained the main defensive
weapon of the castle in the first half of the XVII century.
In
1660, 11 turrets, 12 unmounted matchlock muskets, 4 self-propelled guns
with 55 muskets remained in the castle. Soon, a significant part of the
weapons was sent to Nesvizh, and 35 muskets and 1 turret remained in the
Mir Castle. According to the register of 1681, only 16 guns and 3 musket
barrels are mentioned.
The chapel-tomb was built as a family tomb of the princes
Svyatopolk-Mirsky in the Empire style. It is located half a kilometer to
the east of the Mir Castle in an English park, well visible from the
manor house.
The project of the church-tomb was developed by the
St. Petersburg architect Robert Robertovich Marfeld commissioned by
Cleopatra Mikhailovna Svyatopolk-Mirskaya. The construction of the grave
crypt began in 1904 and continued until 1910 (according to other sources
until 1911), it was consecrated in honor of St. Nicholas - in memory of
the husband of Princess Cleopatra - Nikolai Ivanovich.
The main
volume of the building is rectangular in plan, with corners cut off from
the north side and a 5-sided apse. The main façade has an
asymmetric-dynamic volumetric-spatial composition, the dominant of which
is the belfry tower (3-tiered, 4-sided, completed with a dome). The main
façade is painted with risalit and decorated with a large multicolored
(blue, ocher, golden) panel - “Christ the Pantocrator” and a voluminous
chased coat of arms-cartouche of the princes Svyatopolk-Mirsky with the
coats of arms of two cities: Kiev and Moscow. The church consisted of a
narthex, a temple and an altar. The crypt of the temple was designed for
twenty burials.
There are five graves in the grave crypt: the
graves of Prince Nikolai Svyatopolk-Mirsky, originally buried near the
walls of the Holy Trinity Church, Princess Cleopatra Mikhailovna, their
granddaughter Sonechka (daughter of Ivan's son), two sons Ivan and
Mikhail.
In 1939, the church was looted, the remaining church
property was taken to St. George's Church, and the church premises were
transferred to the granary of the distillery. On December 1, 2008, the
tomb church opened its doors to visitors.
The roadside chapel in Mir was built at the beginning of the 20th
century (after 1909) on the site of a wooden chapel commissioned by the
local tradeswoman Frantiska Zaslavska. The entrance inscription has been
preserved: “This chapel was built by Frantiska Zaslavsky for the repose
of her son Vladimir Frantsevich Zaslavsky in 1909.”
The chapel is
a small building, square in plan. The building is plastered and
whitewashed, covered with a single roof, over which there is a cross.
There are wooden doors in the western wall, and one window each in the
southern and northern walls. In the 1930s of the XX century. in the
middle of the chapel was Calvary - a cross with a crucifix on a stand.
The chapel was built to honor the name of Vladimir Frantsevich
Zaslavsky, who died on March 28, 1909 at the age of 37.
The
roadside chapel is considered an architectural monument that has
preserved the memory of representatives of the Zaslavsky family, who
lived in Mir at the end of the 19th — the first half of the 20th
century.
The watchman's house was built at the beginning of the 20th century
in the same style as the chapel-tomb of Svyatopolk-Mirsky. The building
made of red brick and stones with concrete inserts is a small square
building with a vestibule (3.5 by 2 m). The walls of the gatehouse are
divided by horizontal bands and rustication. The entrance gate was
created by a beam arch, thrown from the gatehouse to a square pillar.
There are wrought iron gates in the arch. Above the entrance gate there
is an icon of the Mother of God.
In the first half of the 20th
century, the road from the town of Mir to the prince's church passed
through the gate. The caretaker's house was first mentioned in the 1930s
of the 20th century. After the arrival of the Red Army and the
establishment of Soviet power, the princely watchman continued to live
in the house, who had previously been a bell ringer in the church. The
bell ringer's heirs continued to live in this house until 1990. Now the
room is adapted for a gas boiler to supply heat to the palace part of
the castle and the tomb church.
The Italian Garden was founded in the 17th century. south of the
castle ramparts as a regular park of the Italian type with a system of
alleys and baskets, greenhouses and ponds. The garden is one of the
oldest regular parks in Belarus. In 1654, the Italian garden was
destroyed; only 8 ponds are mentioned in the Inventory for 1686. The
devastated Italian Garden is mentioned in the next Inventory for 1688,
in 1692 a certain Petrovsky worked as a gardener in it. There is no news
about the garden in the diary of the stolnik Peter Tolstoy, who visited
Mir in 1697, only "a menagerie - a fenced pine grove" is mentioned.
According to the Inventory for 1722, the Italian Garden was "fenced
from the gate of the castle to the figurine", and began to take on more
economic than decorative significance. A detailed description of the
park is known from the inventory of 1746. The park consisted of 25
squares, in which there were single fruit trees, clothespins and
vegetables grew, one square served as a garden for medicinal herbs, and
some squares were completely empty. Behind the park were located: a
gardener's house with a greenhouse, outbuildings, greenhouses, and
behind them - a vegetable garden. It is believed that before 1746 the
park lost its Baroque purpose. In 1805, the Italian Garden covered an
area of about 4.62 hectares. The streets-alleys were decorated on both
sides with rows of lindens, some of which have survived to this day. In
1830, the size of the garden decreased due to the construction of a road
to Stolbtsy, in connection with which the park was condemned to a slow
extinction.
At the end of the XIX century. a landscape park with
an area of about 25 hectares was created, the composition of which
included the remains of a regular park in the western part. In the park
there was an artificial reservoir on the site of a garden laid out by
the former tenant of the estate Anton Putyata, bounded from the south by
pine plantations; as well as many exotic plants: larch (Siberian,
European), black pine, pseudo-hemlock gray, bird cherry, Pennsylvania
maple, apple tree, pedunculate oak.
After the return of Prince
Nikolai Ivanovich Svyatopolk-Mirsky to Mir in the 1930s, a new landscape
park was laid on the site of the plot, between the manor and the castle.
In 1934, the road to the west, laid about a hundred years ago, was
moved. The park itself was created in the spirit of landscape
naturalistic parks of that time in the eclectic style. The plantings
were based on local species: maple, heart-shaped linden, smooth elm, and
common oak. Of the species of exotic flora, Pennsylvania ash was most
often used. Weymouth pine, European larch, gray spruce, white fir, white
maple, large-leaved linden grew in groups in the form of tapeworms.
There were many flower bushes: different varieties of common lilac,
spirea, jasmine, white snowberry. Particular attention was paid to the
design of the chapel-tomb, which served as a kind of small architectural
form of the park. In total, about 70 garden forms and hybrids were used
in park plantings. Few plants have survived to our time: some of them
died out in the harsh winter of 1939-1940, some were cut down during the
war years or were lost after the war.
During the Second World
War, several thousand Jews were shot in the depths of the Italian
Garden. After the war, a memorial sign was erected at this place.
Archaeological research on the territory of the castle was carried
out by Yu. Iodkovsky (1912), M. Tkachev (1972), O. Trusov (1980-84,
1991; in 1992 with M. Chernyavsky).
The first excavations in the
Mir Castle were carried out by Y. Iodkovskiy. Having found fragments of
colored glass and polychrome tiles, he concluded that the castle had a
16th century. stained-glass windows and multicolored tiled stoves. A
trench was dug near the palace from north to south, but the remains of
the buildings were not found. A well was found near the main gate.
During the excavations of Tkachev in 1972, the remains of a stone
barbican of the end of the 16th - beginning of the 19th century were
studied. XVII centuries, located in front of the main gate. It was found
that the horseshoe-shaped brick wall had a thickness of 1.25 m in plan.
The remains of this wall were preserved at that time at a height of 1.35
m in places. dating from the end of the 16th - beginning of the 17th
centuries.
As a result of further excavations, an area of about
4000 m² was uncovered. The cultural layer has a thickness of about
0.2-0.3 m near the castle walls to 1 m in the southwestern part of the
courtyard. It was found that on the site of the stone palace in the
second half of the 15th century. there was a settlement that died as a
result of a strong fire, as evidenced by a large amount of coal. The
collapse of an adobe wall made of pot tiles, a lot of unglazed ceramics
of the 15th - early 19th century were found. 16th century At the site of
the settlement in the beginning. 16th century the builders made a mound
of sand and clay from 0.2 to 1 m thick and erected a castle on it, the
foundations of which were deepened by 4–5 m.
In 1981-1984. the
foundations and remains of the walls of one-story outbuildings of the
late 16th - early 19th century were discovered. 17th century around the
south and west walls. To the north of the castle, the remains of the
brick pillars of the 17th-century bridge supports, leading from the
front doors of the second floor of the southern building to the Italian
park, were traced.
The found archaeological finds are placed in
the museum exposition of the Mir Castle, as well as the Grodno State
Historical and Archaeological Museum and the Museum of Ancient
Belarusian Culture of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus.
Separate finds were published many times in the literature, they even
ended up on the banknote of the Republic of Belarus worth 5,000 rubles.
The finds were of great importance in the development of the castle
restoration program.
There are several legends around the Mir Castle that serve to attract
tourists.
Underground passage. There is a popular belief that the
Mir and Nesvizh castles are connected by a tunnel over 30 km long,
through which a carriage drawn by a troika could once freely pass. When
Russian troops occupied Nesvizh in 1812, loyal servants of Radzivilov
managed to hide Nesvizh treasures in an underground tunnel and blow up
the entrance. These treasures have not been found to this day, and among
them, it is believed, are the golden figures of the twelve apostles. But
studies and even a helicopter overflight of the proposed line connecting
the castles did not give a positive result.
The legend of the ghost
of the White Maiden, Sophia Svyatopolk-Mirskaya, affectionately called
Sonechka by the locals. It is believed that she is not as willing to
show herself to people as her “colleague” from Nesvizh, the famous Black
Maiden, but museum workers say that Sophia often goes underground to her
friend in Nesvizh.
Garden legend. At the end of the 19th century,
there was an apple orchard on the site of Mirskoye Lake. Prince Nikolai
Svyatopolk-Mirsky ordered to cut it down and dig a lake in this place.
It was spring time, all the apple trees were in bloom. The inhabitants
of Mir refused to cut trees. According to popular belief, cutting down a
flowering tree is a great sin, people who ruin a young life will be
cursed, and their family will be haunted by misfortunes. But the prince
did not want to give up his idea and waste time and cut down several
flowering apple trees with his own hands, after which a stranger
appeared to him in a dream at night and cursed his family. According to
another version, the mother of one of the lumberjacks who died during
the cutting down of the garden came to the prince and cursed these
places, saying that from that time on, every year one person would drown
in the pond for each cut down tree. Moreover, it is not known exactly
how many trees were cut down, and only men drown in the pond. One way or
another, until our time, a person drowned in the pond every year ... And
Prince Mikhail himself was found dead on its shore in 1898. And at the
request of his wife, pine trees were planted in the clearing between the
palace and the castle as a sign of mourning.
The legend of the ram's
head. On the southern side of the Mir Castle, a small stone resembling a
ram's head stands out clearly. It is believed that under the influence
of paganism, the builders immured a symbolic "ram's head" into the
southern wall. It could be both a magical sign and a warning to enemies,
and a reminder of the Lamb of God. According to an ancient legend, as
long as this “ram” exists, Mir Castle will also stand. Among the
numerous legends of Christian origin there is a legend about God
accepting the sacrifice of Abel, who gave his beloved lamb with a humble
prayer. There is also an explanation that such an image on the wall is
“staphia”, or “element”, and means a ghost, the shadow of a living
creature guarding the house and guarding the treasure.
One of the
legends of the castle tells that Yuri Ilyinich's rival Litovor
Khreptovich, after many years of litigation, without waiting for the
truth in court, cursed the Ilyinichs. The curse fell on the children and
grandchildren of the whole family. After the death of Yuri, the castle
remained unfinished. One of the four sons, Ivan, was disinherited by his
father because "he had significant troubles from him." Evil fate pursued
another son, Nikolai, who died immediately after the death of his
father. Ivan begins to prove his rights to the inheritance. Grand Duke
Sigismund the Old intervened in the struggle of the brothers, with his
letter of May 27, 1527, leaving the castle for his third son Stanislav,
who died in 1531 at a young age. According to another legend, he was
poisoned by his servant's wife. The servant's wife, the beautiful Kasya,
was deceived by panich and was forced to marry the servant. Her newborn
child was killed. Therefore, the proud laywoman took revenge on the
offender and poisoned him, but she herself died a terrible death. The
court sentenced her to be burned. The sentence was carried out by the
youngest son of Yuri Felix, nicknamed Schensny. By his order, the beauty
was burned in the southwestern tower and her bones were immured there.
On moonlit nights, the unfortunate soul wanders around the castle in
search of a child. Son Ivan also dies childless, and Shchensky's last
son Yuri also lived a short life. At this, the Ilyinich family ends.
Warrior legend. During the restoration of the castle, which was carried
out under Mikhail Svyatopolk-Mirsky, two skeletons were discovered
during the opening of the floors, which were later buried by order of
the owner in the Orthodox cemetery. According to legend, at midnight on
New Year's Eve, you can hear the clang of swords, and then a long groan.
According to another legend, during the construction of the castle,
while digging a foundation pit, mammoth bones were found. But they did
not know to whom they belonged, and decided that these were the bones of
a giant and hung them on the flail of the gate of the entrance tower.
Folk fantasy turned the real bones of a living creature into the
legendary giants-builders of the Mir Castle.
There is a legend
according to which Yuri Ilyinich identified the towers with his family.
The main tower meant himself: big and strong, hospitably opening the
gates for friends and acquaintances. Four smaller towers placed at the
corners are his sons: Nikolai, Jan, Stanislav and Szczesny. However, Jan
in the last years of his father's life gave himself up to revelry, so
the construction of his tower stopped. And, indeed, the construction of
the northwestern tower was completed only under Radziwill Sirotka.
Another legend is connected with the events of the Patriotic War of
1812, when an autograph was left on the wall near the window in the
palace dining room. It is believed that it could belong to the French
Marshal Louis Davout. The autograph with the date 1812 was found during
the restoration and framed.
During the restoration of the palace, an
inscription carved on granite was found on one of the fireplaces: “Here
is my Italy. Here is my sun. It is believed that the inscription could
have belonged to the manager of Prince Mikhail Nikolaevich
Svyatopolk-Mirsky Franklin, an Italian by birth. It is not known under
what circumstances the inscription was made, but Franklin himself did
not serve the prince for long and died, unable to withstand the local
climate.
Mir Castle has a rich cinematic history. The first appearance of the
Mir Castle in the cinema took place in 1928 in the silent film "Pan
Tadeusz" (directed by R. Ordynsky, Poland). The full cinematic history
of Mir Castle is as follows:
1964 - military drama "Through the
Cemetery" (dir. V. Turov, USSR);
1966 - military drama "Eastern
Corridor" (dir. V. Vinogradova, USSR);
1970 - the war film "The Brave
Five" (dir. L. Martynyuk, USSR);
1973 - film-tale "Fear of grief - no
happiness to be seen" (dir. V. Turov, USSR);
1977 - the film "Three
Cheerful Shifts" (dir. D. Mikhleev, V. Pozdnyakov, Y. Oksanchenko,
USSR);
1979 - military drama Pani Maria (dir. N. Troshchenko, USSR);
1994 - the film "Shlyakhtich Zavalnya, or Belarus in fantastic stories"
(dir. V. Turov, Belarus);
2008 - series "Yermolovs" (dir. V.
Krasnopolsky, V. Uskov, S. Vinogradov, Russia);
2009 - military drama
"Sniper. Weapon of Retribution (dir. A. Efremov, Russia/Belarus);
2012 - film "1812: Ulanskaya ballad" (dir. O. Fesenko, Russia).
2016
— mini-series Love Out of Competition (dir. I. Khotinenko, Russia).