Metravel city quest
City Vitebsk: free walking route “quest: capital of the avant-garde” along the sights. 7 points. Approximately 2 h. Quests and legends - straight from your
Some cities entered art history quietly. Then there is Vitebsk, which quite literally became that history for a few years. In 1918, Marc Chagall, a local native, returned to his hometown already famous and opened the People's Art School. Everyone could learn to draw, regardless of age or social class. Chagall invited the best to teach, and among those who came were Kazimir Malevich and El Lissitzky.
Then the incredible happened. Malevich drew the students into Suprematism and in 1920 founded UNOVIS, the ‘Champions of the New Art’. The young artists took circles, squares and coloured planes out of the studios and straight into the streets: they painted trams, shop signs, cafés, grandstands and entire façades. Film director Sergei Eisenstein, passing through, described it as a strange provincial Vitebsk where green circles, orange squares and blue rectangles spread across white paint on red brick. For a few years, the quiet provincial city became the world capital of the avant-garde.
Today you will follow the traces of this ‘mad city’: from Chagall's art centre and the palace where Napoleon celebrated his birthday, across the river into Zadvinnye, to a street bearing Chagall's name and still painted with Suprematism.
What to do: 1) Read the story and task at each stop. 2) Find the place on the map and walk to it. 3) Look around and answer the question.
Chagall's biographical route — the house museum on Pokrovskaya Street, his monument, cathedrals and the amphitheatre — is a separate Vitebsk quest. Here we follow the avant-garde. This walking route is about four kilometres long, crossing the Western Dvina once. We start on the right bank, by the Marc Chagall Art Centre (2 Putna Street). Let's go!
The route points in order — what these places are and why they are interesting. Tasks and answers stay inside the quest.
We begin with the man who invited the avant-garde here, rather than the movement itself: Marc Chagall. This 19th-century house has held an art centre bearing his name since 1992.
Opening hours: Daily 11:00–19:00 (ticket office until 18:30), closed on Monday
From the art centre, walk a couple of hundred metres south along Sovetskaya Street. A solid columned building will appear on your left: Vitebsk's oldest civilian palace.
Now head southeast towards the Summer Amphitheatre. A tall brick tower rises above the park's greenery.
Ticket: Adult 5 BYN, school pupil/student 3 BYN, group of up to 20 people: 15 BYN
Now cross the Western Dvina to the left bank, into Zadvinnye. Space takes on a different scale here: you emerge onto Victory Square, the largest square in Belarus.
From the square, head north, deeper into Zadvinnye, to the street now bearing Marc Chagall's name. This is the heart of old Jewish Vitebsk, the very street where Chagall lived and to which he returned in 1918.
Here is the main house of this whole story. You will recognise the elegant early-20th-century mansion at once: local banker Israel Vishnyak built it in 1912–1913.
Opening hours: Tue–Sun 11:00–19:00, closed on Monday · Ticket: Full price 7 BYN, concession (school pupils, students) 3.50 BYN
Walk down from Chagall Street to the Western Dvina's bank. The route ends here, at the place offering the best view of both Vitebsks at once.
This route is part of Metravel city quests. Below are the other quests in this city and cities with quests nearby.