Rechytsa

Rechytsa lies where the Rechytsa River meets the Dnieper, on an old frontier of the Lithuanian lands. Mentioned in 1213, it became part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the fourteenth century. Grand Duke Vytautas built a five-towered castle on the Dnieper bank, and successive ramparts and ditches protected the town around its market, churches and residential streets.

In 1561 Sigismund Augustus granted Rechytsa partial Magdeburg rights. It became a county centre in the Minsk voivodeship, but the Cossack war of 1648–51 brought almost complete destruction; many members of its Jewish community were killed. The town was restored to the Commonwealth after the Truce of Andrusovo, then passed to Russia in the Second Partition of 1793. A new town plan was approved in 1800.