Culture

For many centuries (the documentally approved history of Belarus is as long as 10 centuries) Belarusian people have created a unique culture that has become part of Slavonic and international one. The country is located on the edge of East and West not only in a sense of geography but history and culture as well. And this has always encouraged Belarus to intermingle with other countries’ cultures.

Belarus absorbed the new ideas enthusiastically intertwining them into the canvas of the national culture. Local traditions enriched the traditional culture and favoured the development of new tendencies.

This fruitful synthesis is vividly reflected in the architecture, sculpture and painting.

In X–XIII centuries Belarus being a part of the Ryuriks Empire was an epicenter of the old Russian arts. The XIII century marks the beginning of the fair Belarusian architecture which absorbed some architectural patterns of Kiev Rus and Western Europe. In the Middle Ages the period of total defense architecture set on. The main type of monumental constructions were castles of princes and magnates with powerful walls and towers build of huge boulders and big–size bricks, surrounded by ramparts and ditches.

These two have For instance, by the end of the 10th century Byzantean style Christianity began to spread across Belarusian territory, thus facilitating the development of culture, the appearance of monumental stone architecture, painting art and literature.

The defense tower in Kamenets, monumental castles in Krevo (XIII–XIV), Lida (XIV), Novogroudok (XIV–XVI), Grodno (XIV–XVIII), Mir, Nesvizh (XVI–XVIII), remained. XVI—ХVII centuries gave a life to a special type of defensive churches (church transformed into fortress) and house–fortress. Among them are Mourovanka, Synkovitchy and Hityunishky accordingly.

In XVI–XVIII Baroque style got a vigorous development in Belarus due to the various catholic orders. The Cathedrals in Nyesvizh, Grodno, Glubokoye, Sofia Cathedral in Polotsk (founded in XI century as Orthodox sacred place and converted into the Unia temple in the middle of XVIII) are pearls of Baroque architecture.

The end of the XVIII century saw the advent of Classicism, the architecture followed the art canons of antiquity. Catholic temples were mostly closed and rebuilt into Orthodox churches in the pseudo–Russian style. However, even those artificially implanted plastic architectural forms, when embodied in local materials, natural rock and wood, acquired their artistic originality. A range of palaces, manour estates, church,civil and industrial premises.

Prominent sons of Belarus among which are philosophers, enlighteners, men of literature and art, composers, public, political and religious figures have contributed a lot into the world development of culture throughout the history. They are: Simon Boudny, Metely Smotritsky, Simon of Polotsk, George Konissky, Tadeush Kostyoushko, Adam Mitskevich, Stanislav Monyuoshko, Ignat Domeiko, Michail kleofas Oghinsky, Vladislav Syrokomlya, Mark Shagal and many others.

Search for further information on the topic in the chapter dedicated to the historical sights of the country.