Grodno - City of Belarus

Hrodna or Grodno is a city in Belarus. It is located on the Neman River close to the borders of Poland and Lithuania. It has 325,164 inhabitants . It is the capital of Hrodna voblast and Hrodna raion.

The modern city of Grodno originated as a small fortress and a fortified trading outpost maintained by the Rurikid princes on the border with the lands of the Baltic tribal union Yotvingians. Its name derives from the Old East Slavic verb gorodit.

Mentioned in the Primary Chronicle under 1127 as Goroden' and located at a crossing of numerous trading routes, this Slavic settlement, possibly originating as far as the late 10th century, became the capital of a poorly attested but separate principality, ruled by Yaroslav the Wise's grandson and his descendants.

To aid the reconstruction of trade and commerce, the grand dukes allowed the creation of a Jewish commune in 1389. It was one of the first Jewish communities in the grand duchy. In 1441 the city received its charter, based on the Magdeburg Law. After the First Partition of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Grodno became the capital of the short-lived Grodno Voivodeship in 1793.

An important centre of trade, commerce, and culture, Grodno remained one of the places where the Sejms were held. Also, the Old and New Castles were often visited by the Commonwealth monarchs. In 1793 the last Sejm in the history of the Commonwealth occurred at Grodno. Two years afterwards, in 1795, Russia obtained the city in the Third Partition of Poland. It was in the New Castle on November 25 of that year that the last Polish king and Lithuanian grand duke Stanislaw August Poniatowski abdicated. In the Russian Empire, the city continued to serve its role as a seat of Grodno Governorate since 1801. The industrial activities, started in the late 18th century by Antoni Tyzenhaus, continued to develop.

After the outbreak of World War I, Grodno was occupied by Germany and ceded by Bolshevist Russia under the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in 1918. After the war the German government permitted a short-lived state to be set up there, the first one with a Belarusian name - the Belarusian National Republic. This declared its independence from Russia in March 1918 in Minsk but then the BNR's Rada had to leave Minsk and fled to Grodno. All this time the military authority in the city remained in German hands.

Initially, prosperity was reduced due to the fact that the city remained only the capital of a powiat, while the capital of the voivodship was moved to Bialystok. However, in the late 1920s the city became one of the biggest Polish Army garrisons. This brought the local economy back on track. A The Belarusian language was forbidden by the Polish authorities and Belarusian schools were closed down.

In accordance with the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact the city was transferred to the Belarusian SSR of the Soviet Union, and several thousand of the city's Polish inhabitants were deported to remote areas of the Soviet Union. In 1941, the city came under German occupation, which lasted until July 1944. In the course of the World War II, the majority of Hrodna's remaining Jews were exterminated in German concentration camps. City was renamed by Germans as Garten in 1942.

Since 1945 the city has been a centre of one of provinces of the Belarusian SSR, now of the independent Republic of Belarus.

The city has one of the largest concentrations of Roman Catholics in Belarus. It is also a center of Polish culture, with the considerable number of Poles living in Belarus, residing in the city and its surroundings. All the while, the Eastern Orthodox population is also widely present here.

This city is known for its very important Medical University, Other Educational establishments are Yanka Kupala State University and Agricultural university.

The oldest extant structure in Hrodna is the Kolozha church of Sts. Boris and Gleb . It is the only surviving monument of ancient Black Ruthenian architecture, distinguished from other Orthodox churches by prolific use of polychrome faceted stones of blue, green or red tint which could be arranged to form crosses or other figures on the wall. The church is a cross-domed building supported by six circular pillars.

The church was built before 1183 and survived intact until 1853, when the south wall collapsed, due to its perilous location on the high bank of the Neman. During restoration works, some fragments of 12th-century frescoes were discovered in the apses. Remains of four other churches in the same style, decorated with pitchers and coloured stones instead of frescoes, were discovered in Hrodna and Vaukavysk. They all date back to the turn of the 13th century, as do remains of the first stone palace in the Old Castle.

Probably the most spectacular landmark of Hrodna is the Cathedral of St. Francis Xavier, the former Jesuit church on Batory Square (now: Soviet Square). This confident specimen of high Baroque architecture, exceeding 50 metres in height, was started in 1678. Due to wars that rocked Poland-Lithuania at that time, the cathedral was consecrated only 27 years later, in the presence of Peter the Great and Augustus the Strong. Its late Baroque frescoes were executed in 1752.