В Chechersk, Gomel region, you can see a unique and quite rare for Belarus architectural monument is town hall end of the 18th century. Its construction was started after 1774, while Chechersk was owned by a Russian count - Chernyshev Zakhar Grigorievich.
It is possible that a wooden town hall used to stand on the site of the stone one, after all, the city received the Magdeburg Rights in the early 16th century. However, no reliable information about this has been preserved, so it remains only to speculate about how the building looked in those days.
Chechersk Town Hall interesting for its architecture in which classicism is mixed with pseudo-Gothic elements.
The square-shaped building has 2 main floors, a basement, a spacious room on the 4th tier and ends with a wooden tower (which also has 2 rooms).
The windows of the first floor are rectangular, above them are Gothic semi-arches of the second floor, and then a beautiful cornice with stucco brackets. At the corners of the town hall there are small decorative turrets, ending with complex spiers. The central tower is the tallest with long arched windows.
Most of its time, the town hall in Chechersk was used for administrative purposes. For some period there was a local zootechnical school and a school, and even a pharmacy worked in parallel.
During the German occupation, a prison was set up in the walls of the town hall.
After the war, an educational institution was reopened here, which functioned until 1972 fire. The wooden elements and structures of the town hall were badly damaged in the fire, and as a result, they were engaged in its restoration for many more years.
The official date of completion of work and the grand opening is considered to be 2004. Since that time, it has housed a local museum of history and ethnography.
The Town Hall is the main attraction of the city, which is located in the very center, it will be easy to find it. The museum is open from Monday to Saturday 8:30 to 5:30 (Saturday is a short day, Sunday is a day off).
In Chechersk I recommend to see the former Chernyshev-Kruglikov Palace и Church of the Transfiguration, which, like the town hall, was built at the end of the 18th century.