Brest

Sister cities

• Coevorden
• Aleppo
• Lublin
• Batumi
• Novorossiysk
• Sertolovo
• Brest
• Lutsk
• Ravensburg
• Antalya
• Tyumen
• Izhevsk

History

As a town, Brest – Berestij in Kievan Rus – was first mentioned in the Primary Chronicle in 1019 when the Kievan Rus' took the stronghold from the Poles. It is one of the oldest cities in Belarus. It was hotly contested between the Polish rulers (kings, principal dukes and dukes of Masovia) and Kievan Rus princes. It was recaptured by Poland in 1020, and unsuccessfully besieged by Prince Yaroslav the Wise of Kiev in 1022. It was captured by Yaroslav the Wise, according to various sources, either in 1042 or 1044, remaining under Polish suzerainty until 1205, when Roman the Great rebelled against Poland, but was killed in action in the Battle of Zawichost. Passing under Polish suzerainty again, in 1207, it was granted by Leszek the White as a fief to Princess Anna-Euphrosyne and her children. From 1210, it was directly part of Poland, until it passed to Galicia–Volhynia either in 1215 or 1217. In 1319, the city became part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and Grand Duke Gediminas stayed in the city in the winter of 1319–1320, preparing to capture Kyiv. Its suburbs were burned by the Teutonic Order in 1379. In 1385, it became part of the Polish–Lithuanian union. During the Lithuanian Civil War (1389–1392), in 1390, the city was captured by Polish forces of Władysław II Jagiełło. In 1390, Brześć became the second city in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (after the capital Vilnius), and the first in the lands that now are Belarus, to receive Magdeburg rights. Given its proximity to Poland, it was a significant centre for trade with Poland. In 1410 the city mustered a cavalry banner that participated in the Polish-Lithuanian military victory at Grunwald. In 1419 it became a seat of the starost in the newly created Trakai Voivodeship. Under Władysław II and Vytautas the city…

Geography

Brest lies astride the Mukhavets River which flows west through the city, dividing it into north and south, and meets the Bug River in the Brest Fortress. The river flows slowly and gently. Today the river looks quite broad in Brest. The terrain is fairly flat around Brest. The river has an extremely broad floodplain, that is about across. Brest was subject to flooding in the past. One of the worst floods in recorded history occurred in 1974. Part of the floodplain was reclaimed with hydraulic mining. In the 1980s, big cutter-suction dredgers mined sand and clay from the riverbed to build up the banks. In the 2000s, two new residential areas were developed in the southwest of Brest. To the east of Brest, the Dnieper–Bug Canal was built in the mid-nineteenth century to join the river to Pina, a tributary of the Pripyat River which in turn drains into the Dnieper. Thus Brest has a shipping route all the way to the Black Sea. If not for a dam and neglected weirs west of Brest, north-western European shipping would be connected with the Black Sea also.

Most-observed species

• Mallard

  Anas platyrhynchos Linnaeus, 1758 · Aves
  779
• Great Tit

  Parus major Linnaeus, 1758 · Aves
  687
• Hooded Crow

  Corvus cornix Linnaeus, 1758 · Aves
  617
• Mute Swan

  Cygnus olor (J.F.Gmelin, 1789) · Aves
  540
• Eurasian Blue Tit

  Cyanistes caeruleus (Linnaeus, 1758) · Aves
  531
• Rook

  Corvus frugilegus Linnaeus, 1758 · Aves
  504
• Rock Pigeon

  Columba livia J.F.Gmelin, 1789 · Aves
  503
• Western Jackdaw

  Coloeus monedula (Linnaeus, 1758) · Aves
  488