Berdychiv

Berdychiv grew on the Hnylopiat in the lands between Kyiv and Volhynia. A private town of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, it became famous for its fairs, its fortified Carmelite monastery and its large Jewish community. Its markets drew merchants from across eastern and central Europe.

Recorded as a Tyszkiewicz possession in 1545, Berdychiv received town rights in 1593. Janusz Tyszkiewicz funded the fortified Carmelite monastery, built between 1627 and 1642; its church became a place of Catholic pilgrimage. In the eighteenth century the Radziwiłł family secured the privilege of ten annual fairs, making the town an important centre of trade and banking. A printing house founded at the monastery in 1760 served its religious and literary life. Berdychiv also became a major centre of Hasidism. Rabbi Levi Yitzchok lived and taught here until his death in 1809, and the town's Jewish merchants remained central to its commerce after the second partition of Poland placed it under Russian rule in 1793. By the early nineteenth century its fairs connected landowners, traders and financiers across the region.