Mogilev Town Hall

About this place

Mogilev Town Hall is one of the few town halls in Belarus, in the centre of Mogilev in the east of the country above the bank of the Dnieper, about 182 km east of Minsk in a straight line. Today's building is a reconstruction of the historic hall, opened in 2008. A wooden town hall was begun in 1578, a year after the city received Magdeburg rights, and burned several times. On 4 September 1679 the townspeople began a stone hall, its main body was standing by 1681 and the whole building was finished in 1698; its octagonal five-tier tower with a spire reached 46 metres, making it the tallest building in the city. In 1780 Empress Catherine II and the Austrian Emperor Joseph II looked out over the city from its viewing platform. The building was demolished in 1957 and rebuilt in 2007–2008. The white tower rises in tier after tier to a spire above a white building with a red tiled roof, with a wide paved square in front of it. At night the facade and tower are lit in coloured lights. Visitors admire the tower from the square, go inside the building, which holds a museum, and walk to the nearby bank of the Dnieper. The UK Foreign Office advises against all travel to Belarus, so read the current advice before any planning.