Press releases

MINSK, 12 April (BelTA) – Books from the Radziwill library will return back to the former residence of the "uncrowned kings" for a month for an exhibition "Book Legacy of the Radziwills” which opens at Nesvizh Palace on 12 April, BelTA learnt from Alexander Stefanovich, the head of the department of rare books and manuscripts of the Yakub Kolas Central Research Library of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus (NASB).

All in all, the exposition will feature 90 books on history, theology, law, philosophy, and also works of fiction, and periodicals. These are interesting books from the Radziwill Library at Nesvizh which are now carefully kept in the National Library of Belarus, the Central Research Library of the NASB. “The President’s Library of the Republic of Belarus also owns more than a hundred books from the library of the Radziwills. The National Library has about 500 editions, the Central Research Library almost 3,500,” said Alexander Stefanovich

Of special interest are the books about the famous family such as "Portrait Gallery of the Radziwills" (1857) by Edward Kotlubaj, works by representatives of the Radziwill family such as “Peregrination..." (1628) by Mikolaj Krzysztof "the Orphan" Radziwill from the collections of the Central Research Library of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus.

The catalogue “Radziwill Library at Nesvizh of the 17^th century” will be presented at the opening ceremony. The publication is a continuation of the series of catalogues first issued in 2010 about the once largest private library of the Radziwills at Nesvizh of the 15^th - early 20^th centuries. “The first catalogue, published in 2011, represents a book of 180 pages. The second publication (2012) contains 139 documents of the total of 629 pages. This year we are planning to issue the first book of the third catalogue. Altogether it will consist of four parts and we hope to include nearly 1,000 documents,” Alexander Stefanovich added.

The history of the Radziwill Library at Nesvizh goes back to the 16^th century. Its parts are kept in the libraries of Russia, Finland, Poland, Lithuania and Belarus. In 2009 the Radziwills records and the Nesvizh collection of books were inscribed on the UNESCO Memory of the World Register.

Book Legacy of the Radziwills project is organized in association with the National Historical and Cultural Museum at Nesvizh, the National Library and the Yakub Kolas Central Research Library of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus.