Pinsk

Pinsk sits on the Pina in the Polesie, the great marsh region of the southern Belarus and northern Ukraine, and it grew as the river port and market for that country, which is why its historic core is larger than the town's present size suggests. The Jesuit college of the 1630s and 1640s is the principal building, a long baroque range on the riverfront now holding the regional museum, and the Franciscan monastery church of the same period nearby keeps a carved wooden altar and an eighteenth-century organ. Lenin Street, the pedestrianised main street, has nineteenth-century merchant buildings. The river quay is used for boat trips into the marshes.

History

Nestor the Chronicler first mentions Pinsk in 1097; it passed between the principalities of Kiev, Turov and Volhynia and Lithuania, was laid waste in the Mongol invasion of 1240, received the Orthodox diocese from Turov in 1241, and by 1320 belonged to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, with a Catholic church and Franciscan monastery built in 1396. After its princely line died out in 1521, Sigismund I gave the town to his wife, Queen Bona Sforza, in 1523, who had a canal dug and enlarged the town, Stephen Báthory granted Magdeburg rights in 1581, and in 1631 Albrycht Stanisław Radziwiłł brought the Jesuits, whose college, pharmacy and printing house followed, with Saint Andrew Bobola working here in 1642-1646 (Wikipedia, Pinsk).

What you'll find

• The Jesuit college - the baroque range on the riverfront, now a museum.
• The Franciscan church - the carved altar and old organ inside.
• Lenin Street - the pedestrian street of merchant buildings.
• The Pina quay - the river front and boat departures.

When to go

May to September for the river and the marshes; boat trips run in the warmer months. Museums keep daytime hours and close on Mondays. Spring flooding in the Polesie is a spectacle in its own right.

Before you go

The museum is provincial in scale with labelling in Belarusian and Russian. Boat trips need arranging and run to demand. Much of the historic fabric was lost in the twentieth century. Mosquitoes in the marshes are severe.

Nearby

Turov lies east; David-Haradok is southeast.

Key facts