Dzyatlava

Dzyatlava, also known as Zdzięcioł, Zietela and Zhetl, lies in the Slonim country about 165 kilometres southeast of Grodno. Its first documented reference dates to 1498, when King John I Albert of Poland granted the settlement to Prince Konstanty Ostrogski, who later built a wooden castle there. In the seventeenth century, Lew Sapieha ordered a Catholic church on the main square. Consecrated in 1646, the church was repaired after a 1743 fire and remains standing.

The district also formed the outermost island of indigenous Lithuanian speech beyond the main Lithuanian linguistic territory. Speakers used the distinctive Zietela dialect, and this linguistic community preserved a frontier identity among several names and traditions.

During the Great Northern War, Peter I of Russia stayed in Zietela for a week in January 1708. Later in the century Stanisław Sołtyk owned the town and built a Baroque residence in 1751. After the partitions of Poland, it came under the Russian Empire’s Grodno Governorate, within Slonim District.