Grodno. Old lock.

The Old Castle is the only surviving royal castle on the territory of modern Belarus. For a long time it was the residence of the Grand Dukes of Lithuania and the Kings of Poland. The castle is located on a high and steep hill on the right bank of the Neman near the mouth of the Gorodnichanka River. It began to be built during the time of the Old Russian state. The castle was destroyed, restored and rebuilt several times. Its layout and architecture reveal the layers of many centuries. The topography of the area determined the outline of the castle, close to a triangle. The length of the castle walls reached almost 300 m with an average thickness of about 3 m. The castle was separated from the city by a ravine and a deep ditch.

From the beginning of the 12th century it became the princely residence of the Goroden Principality. A princely tower, a Lower Church, an Upper Church, and other residential and outbuildings were erected here. At this time, a stone plinth wall was built in the castle, which had no analogues among other Eastern European buildings.

In the 14th century, a grand ducal residence was built on Castle Hill, and later a royal palace. The old castle was built for King Stefan Batory on the site of the ancient Upper Castle from the time of Grand Duke Vytautas. The lower part of the defensive walls and the remains of the towers were used from the fortifications. The castle of Stefan Batory was dominated by a palace designed in the Renaissance style. On the ground floor there were ten vaulted rooms where the arsenal, office, treasury and other services were located. The second floor was occupied by royal chambers - front and residential, united into a typical palace enfilade. There were no internal connections between the floors; each of them had separate entrances. In the center of the main facade there was a grand staircase that led upstairs to the royal chambers.

Today, on the territory of the Old Castle there is a palace (an architectural monument of the Renaissance, built in the 1580s), the remains of defensive walls of the late 14th - 15th centuries, the ruins of the Lower Church and the remains of the prince's tower - monuments of the Grodno school of architecture of the 12th century, the remains of the Upper Church XV century Now the castle houses the Grodno State Historical and Archaeological Museum. Traditionally, the entire complex of buildings on Castle Hill is called the Old Castle. Since 2015, its large-scale reconstruction has been underway in the expected forms of the late 16th century.

In 2021, an exhibition was created in the restored premises. She talks about the main stages of the development of Castle Hill: Detinets of the 11th–12th centuries, the Gothic castle of Grand Duke Vytautas, the Renaissance palace of Stefan Batory, reconstruction of the 17th–19th centuries. The exhibition introduces the occupations and crafts of townspeople in the 11th–13th centuries, talks about the attacks of the crusaders and the defense of the castle in the 13th–15th centuries, the election of Stefan Batory as King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania and about his role in the history of Grodno. The exhibition features tools and household items, building materials, weapons and military equipment found during archaeological research that has been carried out on Castle Hill since the 1930s and continues today, as well as armchairs from the 18th century. from the Old Castle, reconstruction of the hetman's ensign Stefan Batory and the Grodno city Haidutsk banner, chest of the 18th century. and many other interesting items.