Turaw

Turaw (Turov), population around 2,800, is one of the oldest towns in Belarus and sits in Zhytkavichy District within the historical Polesia region. According to legend it was founded around 950 by the Varangian prince Tur; it is first recorded in the chronicles in 980, when Vladimir the Great made his young son Sviatopolk knyaz of Turov. Turaw grew into the capital of the Principality of Turov, one of the leading cities of Kievan Rus' alongside Kiev, Chernihiv, Novgorod, and Pereyaslav, thanks to its position on trade routes linking the Baltic to Byzantium; it was also home to the influential 12th-century bishop and writer Cyril of Turov. A 12th-century cathedral built on the town's Castle Hill was likely the largest religious building in the western lands of Rus', but it was destroyed by an earthquake in the early 13th century, and the principality's fortunes declined after that. Turaw passed to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in 1320, then to Poland-Lithuania; wars with Muscovy devastated it (by 1667 only 111 of 401 households remained), and Russia annexed it after the 1793 partition of Poland, reducing it to a small provincial town. A Jewish shtetl flourished here from the 16th century until the Holocaust destroyed the community in the Second World War. Today Turaw is a quiet agricultural town on the edge of the Pripyat wetlands.

• The stone crosses of Turaw — Local legend holds that around a dozen stone crosses floated upstream to Turaw along the Dnieper and Pripyat rivers from Kiev following the Christianization of Rus'. Four are known today: one inside the wooden Church of All Saints (built 1810), one in the yard of the Cathedral of Sts. Cyril and Lawrence of Turaw, and two in a cemetery outside town — where one is said to be slowly emerging from the ground and is a popular local pilgrimage site.
• Ancient Turaw historical-archaeological complex — On Castle Hill, the excavated foundations of the destroyed 12th-century cathedral are preserved under a glass dome, alongside a local history museum displaying artifacts — old books, tools, and household items — recovered from the site.

• Pripyatsky National Park (15 km south) — Wetlands
• Kalinkavichy (60 km north) — Railway town
• Mazyr (50 km east) — Oil refining centre