The oldest educational institution of present-day Belarus.

The oldest school of Belarus dates from sixteen seventeen when on the twentieth of May a prince Januš Radzivil issued a letter missive of foundation of an evangelic temple and "a specialized school for education of Christian youth". According to a testament of Januš Radzivil his brother Kryštap announced by a special letter missive about opening on the base of the specialized school a calvinistic gymnasium, a solid building for which was built in sixteen thirty. Children of citizens and the nobles, sometimes peasant's boys were being admitted to the gymnasium. A term of education was six – eight years. The education in the gymnasium was fee-paying. Children were studying Polish, Latin, Greek and German languages and also ethics, rhetoric, history, mathematics and law. In almost four centuries of its work many famous people – public men, scientists, artists and so on – exited from the walls of the gymnasium. A wooden building in which the gymnasium started its work was changed by a stone building in a classicism style in eighteen thirty-eight. A school garden and wooden huts of teachers were situated in the adjoining to the gymnasium territory. In nineteen twenty-three a Belarusian school where Jakub Kolas at one time was reading lectures on methods of teaching of Belarusian language had been founded in the building of the gymnasium. Here the poet read in full his poem "New land" for the first time. Before nineteen forties a stone calvinistic church with a tower was existing near the school. It was damaged during the Second World War and after the War it was took to pieces by order of temporal authorities. A new bricken campus building for the school was built in nineteen eighty. Now Gymnasium № 1 of Sluck city functions here.

Publication date: 26.06.2017.

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