Pinsk. Jesuit College.

The Collegium in Pinsk was built in 1635-48. It is the oldest building in the city. It stands out because each of its facades is unique. Its architecture combines the perfect proportions of the Renaissance and the pretentiousness of the Baroque. The windows of the three floors sparkle through the frequent sashes of the frames from the courtyard. Curved pediments are decorated with spiral-like scrolls of volutes. The red tile roof is decorated with tall white chimneys. The mighty walls of the collegium breathe antiquity. The ground floor is decorated with a cloister (covered gallery). A wide porch and an L-shaped collegium invite residents and guests of Pinsk to admire its greatness.

The Collegium was part of the advanced education system created by the Jesuits. Together with the collegium in Polotsk, he held the highest rank among other Jesuit collegiums in Belarus. They taught here for free, accepting both Catholics and Orthodox, including nobles and petty-bourgeois children.

Thanks to the efforts of the Slovenian encyclopedic scientist Gabriel Gruber, physical, mineralogical and astronomical classrooms appeared at the collegium. Classrooms, corridors, chapel and refectory were decorated with valuable icons, paintings and sculptures. The rich library of the collegium was taken to Leningrad in 1940, and has been lost to Pinsk and Belarus to this day. There was also a printing house in the collegium, where books in Latin and Polish were printed, as well as poetry collections by students. The oldest pharmacy in Polesie was located in a special two-storey building. The first Polessky theater appeared here, where various mysteries from the lives of saints were staged.

Among the famous graduates were poet, historian and religious figure Adam Narushevich (one of the founders of Polish educational poetry and the author of the multi-volume "History of the Polish People"), philosopher, rector of the University of Warsaw Karol Wyrwicz, politician Mateusz Butrimowicz and others. The walls of the collegium remember the Jesuit preacher Andrei Bobol, who was martyred at the hands of Cossacks in 1657 and canonized in 1853. His holy relics rested in the crypt of the church, then were transferred to Polotsk, visited Moscow and, thanks to the Vatican, rested in the Warsaw church of St. Andrew Boboli.

The old collegium has also seen two monarchs. In 1706, during the Northern War– the Swedish King Charles XII. In 1784, Polish King Stanislaw August Poniatowski stayed here in the former Jesuit monastery.

In 1773, due to the liquidation of the Jesuit Order, the monastery was closed and its property was confiscated. Then it briefly became the property of the Uniates. After the partitions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1800, the monastery, along with its property, was transferred to the Epiphany Orthodox Monastery, and in 1875 the Lyadan Theological School was transferred here. In the 20s – 30s of the XX century, the church and the collegium again belonged to Catholics. In Soviet times, many institutions were located here, which saved the collegium from destruction. After restoration in 1995-1996, the Museum of the Belarusian Polesie moved here.