Metravel city quest
City Lepel: free walking route “quest: the tsmok of Lake Lepel” along the sights. 8 points. Approximately 2 h. Quests and legends - straight from your
Most towns tell legends about castles and treasure. In Lepel, the legend lives in the lake itself.
Lake Lepel is a great expanse of water: more than ten square kilometres, up to 33.7 metres deep. For generations people have said a tsmok, a water dragon, lives in its depths. This is no frightening monster, but an almost domestic creature. Local historian Vladimir Shushkevich recorded his grandmother's legend: on a wedding day the tsmok swam from Lake Lepel to Volova Gora village for treats. At precisely midnight the newlyweds left the celebration for the water, tossed in food, poured out a glass and asked the lake's master to bless their married life. Thus Lepel's tsmok became a patron of lovers. In his novel ‘Christ Landed in Hrodna’, Vladimir Korotkevich described Lepel's tsmoks as seriously as a zoologist: a body like a seal's, only far larger, folded, hairless, with broad flippers. There is a sad scene in which around forty of them die in Lake Lepel in a single night.
The town has history too. Lepel was first mentioned in 1439. In 1586 Lew Sapieha, future Chancellor of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, bought these lands and moved the town to its present site. In the early XIX century the Berezina water system passed through Lepel: a canal route more than a hundred and fifty kilometres long, linking the Dnieper and Western Dvina. The quiet town became a major waterway junction, housing the system's administration while boats sailed straight through its lake.
Today you will walk towards the lake's master: from the museum in an old warehouse, through the main square to quiet ‘Pyatinka’, the twin-towered Catholic church and Sapieha's monument, then to the lakeside park where a mermaid and tsmok await. The walking route is under two kilometres, finishing by the water. For the determined there is an optional bonus excursion: Serpent's Stone, thirty kilometres away, requiring a car.
We begin at the local history museum, 38 Sovetskaya Street.
The route points in order — what these places are and why they are interesting. Tasks and answers stay inside the quest.
Before you stands a two-storey brick building from the end of the century before last, a former wine-refining warehouse built in 1897. Its thick walls once protected very different stores.
Opening hours: Tuesday–Sunday 10:00–18:00. Closed Monday. · Ticket: Admission: standard 11 BYN, concession 7 BYN. Individual rooms 1–3 BYN.
Walk a couple of hundred metres north along Sovetskaya Street from the museum. It leads to Freedom Square, Lepel's main square.
Turn west from the square onto Volodarskogo Street. About six hundred metres on, a small church appears among private houses: a low porch, a bell tower above the entrance and, over the chancel, an octagonal drum with an onion dome.
Return towards the centre and Leninskaya Street. The two towers of Saint Casimir's Catholic church already rise above the neighbourhood.
You need not go far. Just a few tens of metres from the church, facing the town he once reinvented, stands a bronze Lew Sapieha.
Walk north from Sapieha's monument towards the water. In a couple of minutes you enter the town park on Lake Lepel's shore.
Thirty steps along the shore, and here he is. A bronze tsmok curls up on a stone by the water, watching passers-by kindly.
This optional bonus cannot be reached as part of the walk. Serpent's Stone lies in a forest near Gogolevka village, on the boundary of Chashniki and Lepel districts, about thirty kilometres from Lepel.
This route is part of Metravel city quests. Below are the other quests in this city and cities with quests nearby.