Kremenets

Kremenets lies among steep hills in southern Volhynia, beneath a castle that crowns a rocky height. The fortress protected a town on the routes between Volhynia and Galicia. In the thirteenth century it was among the strongholds that resisted Batu Khan's invading forces.

The town received Magdeburg rights in 1431 and passed to the Polish Crown with the Union of Lublin in 1569. In 1648 Cossacks under Maksym Kryvonis besieged its fortress for six weeks. The garrison surrendered, and the damaged castle was never rebuilt. Kremenets became part of the Russian Empire in the third partition of Poland in 1795. In the early nineteenth century Tadeusz Czacki founded a celebrated school here, later known as the Kremenets Lyceum, which made the town a centre of education in Volhynia.