Jesuit Collegium

The Jesuit Collegium is the building that gives Pinsk its strongest old-town profile: a long, white, heavily built 17th-century complex facing the river and Lenin Square. It was founded when the Jesuits were making Pinsk an educational and religious centre for Polesia, and its thick walls still feel more like a fortress than a school.

Today the building houses the Museum of Belarusian Polesia, which makes it doubly useful. Even if you do not go inside, walk around the exterior and look at how the facades change from side to side. The lost church once stood beside it, so what you see now is only part of the original ensemble.

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A story
The Collegium survived where its great Jesuit church did not. The church was demolished after the Second World War, leaving the school building to carry almost all the visual weight of Pinsk's Jesuit past.