Salvete Omnes,
a quick late summer entry - a little posting on the Mir Castle (Zamek w Mirze, Мірскі замак, Mirski zamak) in the Grodno District.
XV-XVI century Lithuanian Duchy court marshal and starost of Brzesc (Brest) and Kowno (Kaunas) Jerzy Iwanowicz Ilinicz (?-1527) had a Gothic castle with 5 imposing towers built in his manor of Mir. His grandson Jerzy, who was a son of Zofia nee Radziwill, was the sole heir to the fortune, and having been brought up by Mikolaj Radziwill the Black, he unfortunately died without issue, and thus Jerzy made a testamentary bequest to his cousin Mikolaj Radziwill Sierotka (the Orphan), last will passed the castle and estates to the Radziwill family. They rebuilt the castle in the Renaissance style, adding a palazzo to the castle complex.
Unfortunately, the wars - starting with 1655 (the Deluge) through the Great Northern War, Polish-Russian war of 1792, and Kosciuszko Insurrection of 1794, the Napoleon invasion of Russia 1812 - caused multiple damage to the castle complex.
In 1895 the Swietopelk-Mirski family bought the castle from the descendants of the Radziwill clan and zu Sayn-Wittgenstein-Berleburg, and started some rebuilding of the castle ruins. Bolsheviks murdered local Polish patriots in the castle ruins in 1919.
Michal Swiatopelk-Mirski started restoration of the castle in 1923, based on the plans of Teodor Bursche (Bursze).
Unfortunately the communists, as the Soviet Union, returned in September 1939 (killing and deporting to Siberia our Polish inhabitants of Mir), and the the Nazi Germans in 1941 through 1944 (murdering the Jewish inhabitants of the town of Mir). Stalin's Soviet Union took final possession of the castle until the end of the Soviet Union, in 1991.
Finally, the castle has returned from Valhalla - during the early decade of the XXI century the miracle took place, the ruins were rebuilt - below the beautifully rebuilt castle of Mir, by the taxpayers of Belarus. They say a fine museum too.
Vivat!
Enjoy
Valete
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