Bobruisk (Babruisk): Unravel The Secret Of Wealth And Success.

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The town of Bobruisk is one of the biggest and oldest towns in Belarus. It is also a «literature celebrity». Characters of the novel The Little Golden Calf by Ilf and Petrov called it «a wonderful, highly cultured place». The sculpture featuring one of the novel’s characters Shura Balaganov was unveiled near the Red Tower.

Centuries ago Bobruisk was famous for traditional crafts and beaver hunt. The town derives its name from the Russian word «bobr» meaning beaver. The town has a modern popular symbol – the Beaver monument. They say that to be wealthy and successful one needs to rub a watch chain on his big paunch.

There was a steady increase in the Jewish population of Babruysk following the Napoleonic wars. By 1897, in the population of 34,336 citizens, 60% were Jews. Bobruisk has the architecture of the Jewish town of the 19th – early 20th centuries.

Bоbruysk is one of the oldest cities in Belarus. It was first mentioned in writing in the middle of the 14th century. Investigations by archaeologists revealed that in the 5th and 6th centuries there existed Slavic settlements up the river Biarezina from where Babruysk is currently located. Despite the city's rather long history, the vast majority of buildings, even in the center, are relatively new.

Bobruisk Fortress

The Bobruisk Fortress is an outstanding defense installation, one of the best surviving specimens of fortification architecture of the first half of the 19th century. In the early 1840s the Bobruisk citadel was the most inaccessible fortress in the Russian Empire and one of the best-equipped defense installations in Europe. During the Great Patriotic War the Nazis turned the fortress into a concentration camp for Soviet prisoners of war and killed about 40,000 soldiers and 40,000 civilians. Later it housed military barracks, warehouses. In 2002, the specimen of history and architecture «Bobruisk Fortress» was added to the state register of historical and cultural heritage of the Republic of Belarus. Today the fortress is open for excursions, film shooting and archeological studies.

Sights in Bobruisk:

• White Church (St. George Church) near the walls of the Bobruisk Fortress. The building of the church executed in the Moscow-Yaroslavl direction in the retrospective-Russian style.

• St. Nicholas Cathedral.

• Tradeswoman Kacnelson’s house. An architectural monument of the «modern» style. Before the revolution, the house belonged to merchant-philistine Kacnelson. There is a legend that once this house was not on the Bobruisk land, but somewhere in the Baltic. The house attracted the Bobruisk merchant Kacnelson, she bought it and ordered it to be transported to Bobruisk.

• A monument to the Beaver, a symbol of the city of Bobruisk (in ancient times beaver hunting was the main activity of local people: beaver fur was used to make hats for the Russian court nobility, valuable beaver skin was exported to Europe).

• Church of the Virgin Mary. The temple was built in 1901-1903.

• St. Nicholas Church founded by Alexander Pushkin’s granddaughter countess Natalia Vorontsova-Velyaminova (the village of Telusha).

• Memorial to the soldiers of the 1st Belarusian Front and partisans who were killed during the liberation of Bobruisk District (the village of Sychkovo).

• The synagogue in Bobruisk. Today it is the only active Jewish temple in the city. The age of the synagogue is more than 200 years old.

• Bobruisk Fortress. Its a must to visit the fortress and to walk through the immense complex of associated former army barracks.

Museums:

• Bobruisk local history museum. Follows the history of the town a region through history to almost the modern day using interesting displays (Sotsialisticheskaya str., 56/40).

• Bobruisk Art Museum. In the museum you can get acquainted with the works of artists whose life and work were connected with the Bobruisk district (M. Gorky str., 28).

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