Metravel city quest
City Mogilev: free walking route “quest: lights of a winter evening” along the sights. 11 points. Approximately 2 h 30 min. Quests and legends - straight from
Winter celebrations in Mogilev form a long procession, and each has an address of its own. On 19 December Orthodox Christians remember St Nicholas, the very saint whose life inspired all the world's winter gift-givers. On the night leading into 25 December, bells ring for Catholic Christmas; on 7 January, for Orthodox Christmas. Both dates are public holidays in Belarus. Then begin Kalyady: twelve days of generous suppers, songs beneath windows, a costumed Goat and batleyka, a puppet Nativity theatre in a wooden box. The circle ends with Vadokhryshcha, Epiphany, on 19 January, when people go down to rivers, including the Dnieper, for Epiphany water.
This route will take you through the celebrations in almost calendar order: from St Nicholas Monastery in Podnikolye, through provincial-era quarters where Catholic archbishops lived and merchants traded, to a theatre where batleyka remains alive and a cathedral visited on Christmas night leading into 7 January. Along the way are a winter landscape painter's house with an optional museum visit, a gift from Tula in the middle of a courtyard, Stars Square and a warm break on Leninskaya Street.
December to mid-January is best, when the lights are on. The tasks work all year: they focus on permanent things rather than Christmas trees and garlands. The walking route is about four kilometres and takes about two and a half hours with stops. Services take place in the churches, so all tasks are completed outside; there is no need to enter. The café break comes halfway along.
We begin down in Podnikolye, by the fence of St Nicholas Monastery on Surty Street.
The route points in order — what these places are and why they are interesting. Tasks and answers stay inside the quest.
Before you is St Nicholas Monastery: white churches beneath dark domes at the very edge of the Dnieper floodplain. Kyiv Metropolitan Petro Mohyla received permission to build a church of St Nicholas here in 1636.
The austere brick house with its end wall facing Leninskaya is the Catholic archbishop's former palace, built in the 1780s in the Classical style. Its main façade faces the Dnieper, and it stands on the same axis as St Stanislaus Church, which the route will reach a little later.
The white Baroque church behind the fence is the Cathedral of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary and St Stanislaus, Mogilev's main Catholic church. It was built in 1738–1752 on the site of the burned wooden church of a Carmelite monastery.
Behind a wrought-iron fence in the courtyard of 37 Leninskaya stands a stone mansion with a mansard roof, one of Mogilev's oldest residential houses and a Baroque monument. It was built at the turn of the 18th century as the home of a prosperous merchant family.
Opening hours: Tue–Sun 11:00–19:00; closed Mondays
This is an optional continuation of the stop at the landscape painter's house. You have already reached the plaque by the gates; now you can decide whether you want to enter the museum itself.
Across the road from the landscape painter's house, at 36 Leninskaya, is “Van Gogh”, one of the best-known cafés on the pedestrian part of the street. On Google Maps it has more than a thousand reviews and an average rating of 4.4.
Opening hours: Daily, usually until 23:00 (check hours on Google Maps)
Through the archway by the “Lira” hotel opens the Tula Courtyard, a little park with paths, benches and a playground. At its centre, on a circular platform, stands an enormous Tula samovar fountain, the courtyard's most photographed feature.
From the Tula Courtyard, return to Leninskaya and walk a little north. The street opens into a square above which rises a bronze stargazer.
The two-storey building with a tower beneath a tented dome and a kokoshnik gable above its side wing is a former bank, built in 1903–1914 in a mixture of Art Nouveau and Russian Revival styles. Two banks occupied it at once, the Peasants' Land Bank and the Nobles' Land Bank.
Opening hours: Tue–Sun 11:00–19:00 (ticket office until 18:30); closed Mondays · Ticket: 4.40 BYN; children aged 7+ and students 2.20 BYN
Before you is the regional puppet theatre: an old 19th-century building with arched windows and a modern extension with columns. The old part is a former gendarmerie barracks, built before 1861.
The white cathedral a few steps from the theatre is the Cathedral of the Three Holy Hierarchs, Mogilev's main Orthodox church. Its foundation was laid in 1903, and construction took eleven years, until 1914.
This route is part of Metravel city quests. Below are the other quests in this city and cities with quests nearby.
Traveller articles about this city will help round out the walk.