Cathedral Mosque of Minsk

The Church of St. Mary Magdalene is an Orthodox church built in 1847 in brick. It was closed in 1949 and adapted for the storage of film and photographic archives. In 1990, the church was returned to the Orthodox faithful. It was the first church in Minsk to be licensed by the Soviet-era services after a long period of banning the opening of churches.

The Salzman Synagogue was built in 1864 at the expense of the merchant Salzman for the poor Jews of Minsk in the suburb of Raków. During the Second World War, it was abandoned and was later rebuilt to house a sports club. Today, the two-storey brick building houses a chess centre.

The Cathedral of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul is the oldest church in Minsk still in use. It was built between 1612 and 1630 together with a monastery of the same name. At the beginning of the 18th century, the monastery was almost completely destroyed during the Great Northern War. Empress Catherine II (1762-1796) had the monastery church renovated between 1793 and 1795, but the monastery was then dissolved. In 1812, during the advance of Napoleon's troops against Russia, the Peter and Paul Church was destroyed by French soldiers and served as a field hospital for two months. The church was renovated between 1870 and 1871. The church was closed by the Bolsheviks in 1933 and resumed definitively in 1991.