Minsk authorities organized a blogger tour of Pishchalauski Castle — former Pre-Trial Detention Center No. 1, known as Volodarka. After reconstruction the complex is to open to visitors: a museum display, food venues, and nearby mass events and historical reenactments. Blogger Maxim Pushkin showed the building and wrote: “Once they finish, they’ll open it for everyone! There will even be venues.” That line sparked a sharp reaction on Threads.

“+1 landmark” on the bones of memory

The press tour of city districts was arranged by the Minsk City Executive Committee. Bloggers filmed walls, scaffolding, a “beautiful” street view — and barely mentioned what the place had been for almost two centuries. Posts spoke of a museum, a coffee shop, restaurants, “waiting for +1 landmark in Minsk,” “it will be very, very beautiful.”

The regime of dictator Aliaksandr Lukashenka knows how to rebrand violence as an urban product. Walls where people were held, tortured and executed are pitched as a location for bars and interactive “history” — without a reckoning for political prisoners.

What people wrote on Threads

“It’s like opening a coffee shop in a concentration camp.”
“It was always open to everyone — with a catch.”
“I’d like to believe there won’t be venues, but a museum of repression.”

Others said eating, drinking and “chilling” in walls soaked in fear is immoral. Some compared the idea to the restaurant near Kurapaty. Former detainees had already called such plans an attempt to “erase history” and a “Disneyland” on a cemetery.

Almost 200 years as a prison — and 42 political prisoners before closure

The castle was built in 1825; from the start it was a prison. 19th-century rebels, writers and poets, victims of the 1930s Stalinist executions sat here. For postwar decades Volodarka was Minsk’s Pre-Trial Detention Center No. 1; death sentences were also carried out here, including after Belarus gained independence.

Until April 2024 detainees were still held in parts of the complex — then the facility moved to Kaliadzichy / Pashkovichy. In January 2024, as the site prepared to close, at least 42 political prisoners were held there. Among those who passed through these walls were Eduard Babaryka and Aliaksandr Feduta.

In summer 2026 Minskstroy reported about 17 “dilapidated” buildings demolished, piles driven, foundations reinforced. Reconstruction is promised by 2027. Officially — a “multifunctional cultural complex” with catering, a “museum display with interactive elements” and a space for mass events. Authorities had already rejected a full museum of repression: the National History Museum will not move here.

Not “beautiful” — responsibility

The question is not whether an unsafe monument can be restored. It is whom and what it will speak for. Cafés and “historical reenactments” beside walls that held political prisoners under Lukashenka only yesterday are not urbanism. They are an attempt to wash blood out of a city brand.

If a museum does appear at Volodarka, it must begin not with a menu but with names: who sat, who was tortured, who was shot, who walked free and who never lived to see freedom. Otherwise the “landmark” remains a regime shop window — with a latte where a cell used to be.