Bobruisk Castle, Medieval castle site in Babruysk, Belarus

Bobruisk Castle was a complex of wooden defensive and administrative buildings on the right bank of the Berezina River. It had a two-tiered entrance gate with a drawbridge over a moat up to 15 m wide, an earthen rampart with three redoubts, and oak walls with three towers. Inside stood a brick arsenal, a two-storey wooden palace with a gallery facing the river, a kitchen wing and cellar outbuildings.

The castle was a complex of wooden defensive and administrative buildings on the right bank of the Berezina, existing from the 14th to the 18th century. Crimean Tatars ravaged it in 1502 and 1503, and it burned during the 1649 siege by Hetman Janusz Radziwiłł's troops and again in March 1655, when Cossacks under Ivan Zolotarenko stormed it. The 1692 rebuilding left it without any defensive role.

The castle stood on the right bank of the Berezina, which, with the steep slope above the river, formed its main natural defence. The name Babruysk comes from the Bobr river, a tributary of the Berezina, and beavers, bobry in local speech, were long trapped along these waterways. The 1638 inventory records a two-storey wooden palace of seven rooms and an entrance hall on the lower floor, four rooms and a gallery facing the river above.

The site is largely open to explore on your own, allowing you to walk through the partially preserved bastions, storage buildings, and redoubt structures. Comfortable walking shoes are advisable since the fortification covers a large area.

The castle's gate was a two-tiered wooden structure: the lower rectangular tier held a passage closed by double doors with a small pedestrian wicket and iron bolts, while the upper tower tier had three gun ports. Two similar two-tiered towers, coated in clay and roofed with shingles, stood on the town side.