Dubrovytsia

Dubrovytsia lies on the Horyn in the wooded lowlands of Polesia. Once part of the principality of Turov and Pinsk, it became the centre of a separate principality in the late twelfth century. Its rulers fought in the campaigns against the Cumans and Mongols, including the battle of the Kalka in 1223.

The town came under Lithuanian rule in the fourteenth century and belonged to the Holszanski family. In 1571 it passed as a dowry to Prince Andrey Kurbsky. Jan Dolski founded a Piarist college here in 1695; its school continued after the monastery was dissolved in 1832. The wooden church of St John the Baptist was destroyed by Swedish troops during the Great Northern War, and a new Catholic church was founded in 1740.