Pinsk. Butrimovich Palace.

Story

The Butrimovich Palace was built in 1794 according to the design of the Vilnius architect Karol Schildhaus. On September 9, 1784, the King of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth Stanislaw Poniatowski attended the ceremony of laying the first stone. The palace took about ten years to build. This beautiful building with antique porticoes on the side wings, a protruding risalit in the center and five high porches, previously open to the river, entered the history of the city as the first stone civil building - “Pinsky Mur”.

The first owner of the palace was a prominent public and political figure in Polesie, city judge and respected citizen Mateusz Butrymovich. He was a true patriot of his homeland, took an active part in the reclamation of swamps and the construction of canals, which made Pinsk an international port.

Subsequently, the palace was owned by three eminent Polesie families: the Butrimovichs, the Hordes and the Skirmunts. Among them were talented sculptors, painters, writers, and historians. In the 19th century, the famous artist, musician, teacher, and composer Napoleon Orda lived and worked here.

After the death of the last owner of the palace, Hortense Skirmunt, in 1933 the building was transferred to the state. After the liberation of Pinsk from Nazi troops in July 1944, the palace housed a printing house, and later the Pioneer cinema. Then for many years the building became the city House of Pioneers. After the reconstruction, on April 25, 2009, the grand opening of the Wedding Palace and a branch of the Museum of Belarusian Polesie, which were located in the building of the Butrimovich Palace, took place. In the right wing of the palace there is a small museum dedicated to the history of the Pinsk Mur.

Architecture

The palace is a structure of a mixed architectural type: Baroque and classicism styles are combined with improvisations of canonical forms in details and fragments. What remains of the Baroque style in the palace is the construction of the main plan with curvilinear outlines of the corners, the division of the facade into two tiers, and the oval shape of the main hall. The palace is distinguished by an unusual interpretation of the order: the end facades have four columns grouped in pairs. Each pair of columns is shifted towards the middle. The corner pieces protrude rather than rest on the columns.

The palace is characterized by symmetry. Three buildings of the structure form a front yard, which opens towards the Pina River. In the middle building there are ceremonial rooms, in the side buildings there are living rooms and offices. The interior decoration is made in the Baroque style, but there are also elements of classicism. The layout of the palace is corridor-enfilade. In its central part there is an oval hall, which forms a semicircular bay window with a balcony on the main facade of the palace. The courtyard facade is richly decorated with Doric columns and half-columns, flat and rusticated blades, sandriks, a frieze covered with triglyphs.