The Ruins of the XII Century Temple – Turov, Belarus

We visited Turov during a weekend roadtrip we did over a Summer 2022 stay in Belarus. Turov is one of the most ancient towns of Belarus, which is why I was very interested in visiting it.

Turov was mentioned in the well-known work “The Tale of Bygone Years” in 980. There is an opinion that Turov was the second biggest town in the old Kiev Russia. However, there is no idea of the origin of the town’s name. There is a legend that it was Prince Tur who gave the name to the town that came to govern and, as such, was mentioned in the famous tale. But there are some contradictions as the tale states that “Tur came to Turov,” so it can be concluded that the town and its name had existed before Tur came to it. According to another legend, as we were told, an animal tur gave the name to the town. However, all of these are just legends and there is no written proof of the origin of the town’s name.

Old Turov was situated on a natural hill while other towns were built in bogs and lowlands. The construction of a temple was started in Turov approximately in the 50-60s of the XII century. It was the biggest one in region at the time. But there is no evidence of it in any historical paper that makes impossible to reconstruct or describe it. The history states the temple did not exist for a long time. It was demolished approximately in 1230 but it was not clear how it was done.

Excavations were carried out in 1960 on the site where the temple had stood. Its remnants were found during the excavations. Historians had two versions how it was destroyed: according to the first one, it was connected with the Mongol-Tatar Yoke; according to the second version, it was destroyed by an earthquake. Historians argued a lot about the probability of those two versions and decided that the reason of the destruction of the temple was an earthquake.

It is important to say that Turov is of great interest for many researchers as during excavations there can be found many artifacts. Remnants of the famous Gospel of Turov in Cyrillic were found during the excavation. Thus, scientists found an evidence of the development of Slavic script in Belarus. Today the remnants of the Gospel are kept in Vilnius.

Some photos I took while visiting the archeological site located in this town are presented below: