Sebech

Sebezh occupies a narrow position between Lakes Sebezhskoye and Orono, a natural setting for a fortified town on the southern approaches to Pskov. It appears in the record in 1414, when Vytautas of Lithuania sacked the stronghold. Muscovy captured the place in 1535, and Prince Ivan Shuysky built a wooden fortress there. In the sixteenth century it formed part of the defenses of Muscovy's western frontier.

Control of Sebezh changed during the wars between Muscovy and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Polish and Lithuanian forces retook it during the war of 1605–1618, and the town remained in the Commonwealth until the First Partition of Poland. Its castle hill retained a church built between 1625 and 1648, while Peter the Great ordered the fortifications strengthened during the Great Northern War. After the partition, Sebezh came under Russian rule and became the seat of an uyezd in Vitebsk Governorate in 1802.