Metravel city quest
City Babruysk: free walking route “Bobruisk Quest: Beavers and the Belarusian Odessa” along the sights. 9 points. Approximately 2 h 30 min. Quests and legends
In Ilf and Petrov’s The Little Golden Calf, thirty “children of Lieutenant Schmidt” divided the country between them — and almost came to blows over one particular city. Bobruisk was considered a wonderful and highly cultured place, and everyone was ready to go there right away. A joke? Not entirely.
By the end of the nineteenth century, Bobruisk was one of the liveliest trading towns in the Pale of Settlement. The census of 1897 counted around 34 thousand residents here — and more than 20 thousand of them, six out of ten, were Jewish. The city had forty synagogues, merchants floated timber and grain down the Berezina, and the local wit was a match for Odessa’s. No wonder Bobruisk is still called the Belarusian Odessa. Odessa had Babel; Bobruisk had Ephraim Sevela, who was born here and turned his hometown courtyards into literary legend.
The city also has its own signature animal. The beaver appears on its coat of arms, its souvenirs and its streets. Its best-known resident, the bronze dandy Beaver Samuilovich, will be waiting by the market at the second stop on your route. We will begin a block further south, at the last of Bobruisk’s forty synagogues, and finish where the city shows an altogether different face: at the fortress above the Berezina, which weathered 1812.
What to do: 1) Read the story and task at each stop. 2) Find the place on the map and walk over to it. 3) Look around and answer the question.
This walking route is about four kilometres long, with no climbs — Bobruisk is flat and unhurried. We begin at 36 Sotsialisticheskaya Street, a block south of the entrance to the central market. Let’s go!
The route points in order — what these places are and why they are interesting. Tasks and answers stay inside the quest.
Your first stop is number 36 on Sotsialisticheskaya Street. This modest building is all that remains of an entire world.
Here he is — the master of the city. This bronze beaver was installed at the market entrance in 2006.
This stop is optional. From the beaver, continue north along Sotsialisticheskaya Street, without turning off.
Opening hours: Tue–Sun 10:00–18:00, ticket office until 17:30; closed on Monday
From the museum, walk a block or two north and turn left towards Sovetskaya Street. Above the surrounding block rises an elegant red-brick church with white decoration.
From the cathedral, walk a couple of hundred metres west to Internatsionalnaya Street, formerly Prisutstvennaya Street. Here stands a house that somehow seems out of place in Bobruisk: genuine Art Nouveau, but built entirely of wood rather than stone — an exceptionally rare sight in Belarus.
From Katsnelson’s house, head northwest towards Oktyabrskaya Street — and prepare for the strangest architectural double act in Belarus. The foundation of the masonry Church of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary was laid in 1903 on the site of a wooden church that had burned down.
From the church, walk a couple of hundred metres east to Proletarskaya Street. Rising above the surrounding roofs is a brick tower known locally by its Belarusian name, Chyrvonaya Vezha — “red tower”.
Now the route changes tone. The merchants’ city is behind you; military Bobruisk lies ahead.
From the White Church, continue east into the former citadel. Brick ramparts, barracks and casemates will begin to appear among the grass and trees.
This route is part of Metravel city quests. Below are the other quests in this city and cities with quests nearby.