Minsk

Minsk is best known as a living monument to the grandiose aspirations of Soviet architecture and urban planning. Famously destroyed during the Great Patriotic War (WW2), the Belarusian capital grew out of the ashes of conflict to become a Socialist Realist city complete with spacious avenues, lush green parks and a battalion of buildings dating from the 1940s and 1950s along the Dnieper River.

War Memorials

Belarus suffered during the Great Patriotic War, losing an estimated 3 million people. Nowhere is this remembered more dramtically than at Khatyn where the village razed to the ground in 1943 is a memorial to the villages destroyed duribng the war. The inhabitants of 628 Belarus villages were burned alive by the Nazis. A handful of soil from each of the 185 burned and never rebuilt villages was brought to Khatyn to create a symbolic graveyard. Khatyn became the 186th village, the site of this symbolic graveyard. As a haunting reminder of the horrors of war, it has become one of the most important places in Belarus.

Brest Fortress

Brest Fortress was built in the 1830s-early 1840s at the meeting-point of the rivers Bug and Mukhavyets. During construction, the entire town was relocated to a new position 2km away. The site occupies more than four square km, although many of the outer defences were damaged or destroyed during the wars of the 20th century. The fortress was captured by the German army in 1915 and after World War 1 remained within Polish territory. In 1930 it became infamous as a prison in Poland in the aftermath of the Brest Elections.

In 1939 Brest Fortress was assigned to the Soviet Union. It earned the title of Hero Fortress for the courage demonstrated by Soviet soldiers when they fought against the German army in 1941. Whilst the Nazis took the town of Brest – 90% of which was destroyed in the fighting – the two regiments garrisoned inside the fortress held out. For the people of Belarus, Brest Fortress remains a famous symbol of the Soviet resistance during World war 2.