Halshany or Holszany Castle (, , ) is the ruined residence of the Sapieha

magnate The term magnate, from the late Latin ''magnas'', a great man, itself from Latin ''magnus'', "great", means a man from the higher nobility, a man who belongs to the high office-holders or a man in a high social position, by birth, wealth or ot ...

family in Halshany, Hrodna Voblast,

Belarus Belarus, officially the Republic of Belarus, is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by Russia to the east and northeast, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and Latvia to the northwest. Belarus spans an a ...

. It used to be the seat of one of the largest land estates in the

Grand Duchy of Lithuania The Grand Duchy of Lithuania was a sovereign state in northeastern Europe that existed from the 13th century, succeeding the Kingdom of Lithuania, to the late 18th century, when the territory was suppressed during the 1795 Partitions of Poland, ...

. The current structure was built about 1610 by Paweł Stefan Sapieha to replace an older castle of the Holszanski princely family, of whom Sapiehas were descendants and heirs. Also known as the Black Castle (although it is built of red

brick A brick is a type of construction material used to build walls, pavements and other elements in masonry construction. Properly, the term ''brick'' denotes a unit primarily composed of clay. But is now also used informally to denote building un ...

), the residence formerly rivaled Mir Castle as the most elegant private ''

château A château (, ; plural: châteaux) is a manor house, or palace, or residence of the lord of the manor, or a fine country house of nobility or gentry, with or without fortifications, originally, and still most frequently, in French-speaking re ...

'' of the

. The name ''Black Castle'' in fact originally applies to a fictional building from a book by Uladzimir Karatkievich, which was loosely based on Halshany Castle. The castle and the surrounding estates were devastated, robbed and looted, twice: by the invading

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troops during the

Deluge (history) The Deluge was a series of mid-17th-century military campaigns in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. In a wider sense, it applies to the period between the Khmelnytsky Uprising of 1648 and the Truce of Andrusovo in 1667, comprising the Po ...

and during the

Great Northern War In the Great Northern War (1700–1721) a coalition led by the Tsardom of Russia successfully contested the supremacy of the Swedish Empire in Northern Europe, Northern, Central Europe, Central and Eastern Europe. The initial leaders of the ant ...

in 1704. Due to financial stress experienced by the Sapiehas in the wake of the Domestic War and ongoing Great Northern War, the castle had never been fully restored. Later during the 18th century the castle with its estate diminished by creditors passed to the Żaba family, to be sold to the Korsak family with the estate further diminished by the creditors. The last Polish landlords. the Korsaks, sold, in the last quarter of the 19th century, the castle to a Russian landlord, Gorbanyov, who had the castles' towers pulled down in 1880, but in 1880s, according to the Geographical Dictionary of the Kingdom of Poland, there were still 2 floors occupied with some of the wall paintings visible. In 2018 the government-funded restoration of the northern tower started. An annual tournament is held near its walls each summer.

References

External links

Halshany Castle page at radzima.org

on th
Official Website of Belarus

Charity account opened for Halshany Castle
{{coord, 54.251264, 26.020292, display=title Ruined castles in Belarus Buildings and structures in Grodno region Sapieha family

References

Further reading

External links