Metravel city quest
City Ashmyany: free walking route “Oshmyany Quest: The Town of Four Flags” along the sights. 7 points. Approximately 1 h 30 min. Quests and legends - straight
Oshmyany is a small town on the road from Minsk to Vilnius, right by the Lithuanian border. It is quiet and you can walk around it in an hour, yet over seven centuries four flags have flown above it in turn.
Oshmyany was first mentioned in 1341 as an estate inherited by Jaunutis after the death of his father, Grand Duke Gediminas. Then came centuries in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the Russian Empire, interwar Poland and the Byelorussian SSR; today it is in independent Belarus. Four flags, four states, each leaving its trace: a Catholic church and an Orthodox church, a synagogue belonging to an entire community, a watermill on the little river and a monastery of which only the walls remain.
Most people come to Oshmyany for the church's white “candle” towers, that familiar postcard view. But we will begin at the other end of Sovetskaya Street, by a building nobody photographs, and read the town like a book, through stones, crosses and boarded-up windows.
What to do: 1) Read the story and task at each stop. 2) Find the place on the map and walk up to it. 3) Look around and answer the question.
The walking route is about two kilometres, almost entirely in the centre. We begin by the synagogue at 122B Sovetskaya Street. Onwards!
The route points in order — what these places are and why they are interesting. Tasks and answers stay inside the quest.
You are standing by a large red-brick building with tall, boarded-up windows: the synagogue. The exact date of its construction is unknown: sources variously name the 19th century, 1902 or 1912.
This stop is optional. A few steps along the same Sovetskaya Street, in an old building from the second half of the 19th century (once the town pharmacy), is the district local history museum.
Opening hours: Tue–Sun 10:00–19:00, closed Monday
Here is Oshmyany's main postcard view. Walk a little further south and St Michael the Archangel Church will rise above the roofs: the town's tallest building.
Return to Sovetskaya Street. Nearby, a little north of the Catholic church, stands a third place of worship: the Orthodox Church of the Resurrection of Christ.
Now head down to the water, to Borunskaya Street, where the little River Oshmyanka flows through town. It once gave Oshmyany both life and its name: mills were built along its banks, and the town itself grew up by a crossing on the major road.
Now the route leads to the eastern edge of the old town, to a street with a telling name: Frantishkanskaya (Franciscan Street). Here, among ordinary buildings, tall walls with narrow gaps for windows suddenly rise up: the ruins of the Franciscan Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
A few steps from the ruins, climb the low hill. Locals call it Calvary and Oshmyany's Golgotha, after the hill on which Christ was crucified.
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.