Zhilichi Palace

Zhilichi was built from the 1820s for Ignacy Bulhak to a design attributed to Karol Podczaszynski, a classicist palace of considerable scale for a private house in this region: a long main range with a columned portico, wings, a chapel built into the structure, an orangery and a landscape park with ponds. Interiors kept stucco decoration, parquet and moulded ceilings, some of which survives. The building was used as an agricultural college and then a technical school through the Soviet period, which kept it standing but altered it, and restoration since the 2000s has recovered a number of rooms, the chapel and the facade, opened as a museum while work continues elsewhere.

What you actually see

• The columned facade - the classicist front of the main range.
• Restored interiors - the stucco rooms and the chapel.
• The orangery - the glass range attached to the wing.
• The park - the landscape grounds and ponds behind.

When to go

May to September for the park and the fullest access; the museum keeps daytime hours with winter reductions and closes on Mondays. Restoration continues, so open sections change.

Honest expectations

Restoration is incomplete and parts of the building remain closed. Interiors mix original and recovered work. Labelling is in Belarusian and Russian. Zhilichi is a village with no facilities.

Nearby

Bobruisk lies southeast; Mogilev is northeast.