Mir Castle

Mir castle was begun around 1520 by the Ilinich family and completed by the Radziwills, who added a three-storey palace range along two inner walls in the Renaissance manner, so the building combines a late Gothic defensive shell of red brick with five towers and decorative plaster banding with a residential block inside it. It was damaged repeatedly, used as a residence into the nineteenth century, and left ruinous after the twentieth. Restoration finished in 2010 and the castle now holds a museum through the palace floors, with reconstructed interiors, the tower stairs and the cellars. A landscape park, a pond and the Svyatopolk-Mirsky family chapel-tomb stand beside it. It was inscribed as World Heritage in 2000.

What you actually see

• The brick shell - the five towers and the decorated defensive walls.
• The palace range - the Renaissance residential block inside the courtyard.
• The museum interiors - the reconstructed rooms through the floors.
• The chapel-tomb - the family mausoleum in the park.

When to go

May to September for the park and the fullest opening; the museum works year round with reduced winter hours and closes on some days. Weekends and holidays bring coach groups. Mornings are quietest.

Honest expectations

Most interiors are reconstruction rather than surviving decoration. The museum route is fixed and can be crowded with groups. Tower stairs are steep and narrow. The village of Mir is small with limited facilities.

Nearby

Nesvizh lies southeast; Novogrudok is west.