Drutsk

Drutsk was an old fortified town on the Drut, on the road from Polotsk towards Kyiv and Chernihiv. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries it was the centre of a principality ruled by princes of the Polotsk branch of the Rurikid dynasty. Its name endured in the titles of the Drucki princely families, even as the town itself lost its former prominence.

Russian forces burned Drutsk in 1524. Its castle and settlement were destroyed and rebuilt more than once, and a castle still stood here until the middle of the seventeenth century. The exact course of the town's decline is uncertain, but its surviving earthworks recall a place that had once been an important stronghold on the routes through the region.