City Hall

The Nesvizh Town Hall is the oldest among the buildings of the city government that have been preserved on the territory of Belarus. The grant of the Magdeburg Law to Nesvizh was signed in Grodno on April 23, 1586 by the King of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Grand Duke of Lithuania Stefan Batory. This gave the city full self-government, tax benefits, judicial immunity, favorable conditions for the work of artisans and merchants. At the same time, Nesvizh received his own coat of arms. In 1596, the town hall was built. In the “Magdeburg period” (the end of the XV century. – 1836) on the first floor there were trading shops, a city weighing room, a guard room, a weapons warehouse for citizens in case of danger, a special room for storing fire tools. The second floor was allocated for the magistrate’s offices – the hall of the rada, the court hall, the meeting room, the archive, the treasury, the offices of voit and burmasters were located here, and the city archive was also stored. During the Northern War, the town Hall burned, it was rebuilt in 1752. A large fire in 1836 caused irreparable damage to the building. From the end of the XIX century until 1939. here were the city Duma, the district headman, the police and city councils. From 1997 to 2004, large-scale restoration works were carried out in the Town Hall. As a result, the facades of the building acquired their original appearance, the upper tiers of the tower were restored, the city clock and the observation deck were decorated again (as in the XVI century), the interiors of the 2nd floor were reconstructed for the museum exhibition “City Self-government of Nesvizh of the XVIII-first half of the XIX centuries”.