Near Minsk, part of the Radziwills' burial vault is used as a potato cellar

According to historical data, from the 12th century onwards, an ancient temple stood on the site of the current single-story house in the center of the village. In the 18th century, a new, large, wooden one was built on its foundation. It stood until the 20th century. This very church was founded by the Radziwills. Opposite it was a two-story manor house.

The Radziwill family possessed the secret of mummification. The family burial vault consisted of several tombs and occupied a large area underground. The vault served as the center of a system of underground passages: they led from the manor house to the burial vault and further to the local cemetery.

Later, the wooden church was dismantled: there were plans to rebuild it into a brick one, but the war interfered. And the territory was gradually built up by local residents.

«During the First World War, an orphanage was opened on the site of the manor estate. Then, in the 1920s-30s, the tombs were plundered. And the children constantly climbed through the underground passages and, they say, even found precious stones there,» recalls local resident Nina Karnishka. «In the 1960s, a skull and coffin legs were found there. The artifacts were handed over to Krupytsy School for study in biology lessons.»

Павялічыць

Local residents built sheds above the vault for storing potatoes

Then, closer to the 1980s, adults noticed that children were too actively exploring the dungeons, so the passages were decided to be bricked up. To this day, only one room remains — the central one.

Now, a single-story residential house stands on the site of the church. On the site of the manor estate, there is also housing. And underground, as locals note, it's solid brick: if you start digging, the shovel hits masonry just half a meter deep.

«It's scary to walk there: the soil subsides, collapses happen. Everywhere on the plot behind the house — 50 centimeters deep is brick,» say the villagers.

Local residents have adapted part of the burial vault territory as a place for storing potatoes. And artifacts found at this site — ancient bricks, coins, pottery shards, and fragments of the church facade — are carefully preserved in the Anopal House of Culture (SDK).

The head of the SDK, Sergey Sakharov, considers the object important for the history of the region. He wants to create a tourist route: from the exhibition in the Krupytsy Culture Center to the old cemetery, where there have been no new burials for about a hundred years, and further — to the burial vault itself.

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