Grodno

Grodno, then called Goroden, stands on the Neman where a Rus' fortress faced the Baltic lands, and the Teutonic Knights attacked it again and again between 1328 and 1377. Vytautas ruled it from about 1376 and after 1392 made it one of his main residences. In 1392 the Order took revenge on him by burning the castle and carrying off 3,000 prisoners. Grand dukes allowed a Jewish community in 1389, one of the first in Lithuania, and the town received Magdeburg law in part in 1391 and in full in 1496.

Casimir IV Jagiellon died in Grodno in 1492, eight years after his son, St Casimir. Stephen Báthory rebuilt the Old Castle in Renaissance style, lived there in his last year and died in 1586, and for a time Grodno was effectively the capital of the Commonwealth. The last Sejm of the Commonwealth met in the New Castle in 1793, and King Stanisław August abdicated there in 1795.