The Niasviž City Hall is the oldest building among the buildings of city governments that have been preserved on the territory of Belarus.

According to a number of researchers, after the town received the Magdeburg law, the construction of the town hall started according to the project of the Italian architect Jan Maria Bernardoni. In 1586, in Hrodna, the King of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Grand Duke of Lithuania Stefan Batoryj signed a privilege on the Magdeburg law of Niasviž. At the same time, Niasviž received its own emblem. In the same year, the second privilege was granted to the town by the owner of Niasviž – Mikalaj Kryštof Radzivil Sirotka. According to him, the town leadership was obliged to build a "stone town hall." After 10 years, the town hall was built. The first graphic image of the building has come down to us thanks to the engravings of Tomaš Makoŭski (circa 1604). An old engraving shows that the town clock and an observation deck were located on the tower. The building of the magistrate was built by the means and efforts of citizens, and for several centuries it was the main body for solving pressing issues for each member of the town community. In the same style, shopping arcades, consisting of numerous small shops, were built in Niasviž. In the 17th century, there were 52 stone trading shops. Between them and the town hall building there used to be passages that were closed with massive gates. During the Great Northern War, the town hall was damaged by fire and rebuilt in 1752. The great fire of 1836 caused irreparable damage to the building, especially to the rooms on the second floor. The tower was reduced from six to four floors. The town hall was in a state of disrepair from that time until the end of the 19th century. However, from the end of the 19th century until 1939, the town hall housed the town assembly, district headman, police and town councils. After the Second World War, the town hall housed the regional House of Culture, below – the children's library. From 1997 to 2004, the Niasviž Town Hall, an architectural monument of the XVI–XVIII centuries, was undergoing restoration work. As a result, the facades of the building acquired their original appearance. The upper tiers of the tower were restored. Anew, as in the XVI century, the tower was adorned with a town clock and an observation deck. The interiors of the second floor were reconstructed for the exposition of the museum "Town Self-Government of Niasviž in the 18th – the First Half of the 19th Centuries."

Publication date: 27.11.2017.

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