Metravel city quest
City Shchuchyn: free walking route “Shchuchin quest: a little Versailles and a city of aviators” along the sights. 8 points. Approximately 1 h 30 min. Quests
Shchuchin, a small town in the Grodno region, has lived at least two very different lives. Both left physical traces on its streets.
Its first life began in the 18th century when the town passed to the Piarist order. From 1726, the monks maintained a college and one of the finest botanical gardens in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, teaching local young nobles rhetoric, logic and botany. Its alumni included Ignacy Domeyko, a future Chilean national hero, and college head Stanisław Jundziłł, known as the ‘Belarusian Copernicus’. In the late 19th century, owner Prince Władysław Drucki-Lubecki built a clearly Versailles-inspired palace. Shchuchin has seriously been called a ‘little Versailles’ ever since.
The second life arrived with the 20th century. A military airfield appeared in 1939, and over half a century Shchuchin became one of the Belarusian Military District's largest aviation garrisons. It held the 95th Air Division's supersonic fighters and a long-range reconnaissance regiment. Beside the airfield lay top-secret Dalny garrison, storing nuclear weapons for these aircraft. The Piarists' town became the pilots' city.
Today you will follow streets where those lives overlap: from a bronze poet on a bench to a palace resembling Versailles's Trianon, past a lake with a retired fighter on a pedestal, to churches facing each other for a century and a half, then a square with its own little Big Ben.
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.
The walking route is about two kilometres long, entirely in central Shchuchin. We start on Sovetskaya Street beside Tsyotka on her bench. 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 the little park beside St Teresa's Church. A bronze woman in a simple dress sits on a bench, half-turned towards passers-by, as though pausing from her activity to think.
Walk a few hundred metres along Sovetskaya Street from Tsyotka's bench towards the park. Behind trees on your left appears the building that gave Shchuchin its nickname.
This stop is optional. If you have half an hour and a few rubles, go inside.
Opening hours: 10:00–13:00 and 14:00–17:00 daily (break 13:00–14:00). · Ticket: Adult 3 BYN; child 2 BYN; audio guide 1 BYN; children under 6 free.
Descend from the palace to the water. It stands beside the park lake, and the next stop lies across the little bridge.
Return from the lake to the old town. Here is the first building of Shchuchin's earlier, scholarly life.
Almost directly across the street from the Catholic church stands another: the Orthodox Church of St Michael the Archangel. Built in 1864–1865, immediately after the 1863 uprising was suppressed, it was funded by the treasury.
From the two churches, the street brings you to Freedom Square, the town's main square. Beside it stands a brick house with a distinctive façade: its projecting central section creates a recognisable silhouette, with steps and a low railing before the entrance.
A small tower with a clock and weather vane stands in the centre of Freedom Square. A commemorative plaque on its wall links the original building to the start of the last century.
This route is part of Metravel city quests. Below are the other quests in this city and cities with quests nearby.