1. Former Hotel "Europe" building on Freedom Square and 18 Engels Street.
Two months after the Bolshevik coup, the "Red Terror" began on Belarusian lands. Minsk became one of the first sites where Extraordinary Commissions — predecessors of the KGB — operated. Their headquarters were located in a two-story building at 18 Engels Street — it was there, according to testimonies, that interrogations and executions of "enemies of the revolution" took place.
2. Kojdanava Tract (old Minsk-1 airport area)
After Polish forces occupied Minsk in August 1919, an investigation into the crimes of the Bolshevik "Cheka" began. A Polish-American commission examined horrifying discoveries on the outskirts of the city: dozens of graves containing people who had been tortured and buried alive. Particularly tragic testimonies came from the Kojdanava Tract, where bodies were found with broken bones and signs of torture. These discoveries became the first evidence of the scale of the Red Terror on Belarusian soil.
3. Komarovsky Forest
Komarovsky Forest — today a densely built-up district of Minsk, but a hundred years ago a site of executions and secret burials of victims of Bolshevik terror. In 1919, a Polish-American commission discovered mass graves here, likely in the area of present-day 69 Kuybyshava Street and School #187. Years later, Francishak Aliakhnovich recalled the shootings at Kamarouka, and in the 1930s the Chekists themselves continued to use the name of this place as a synonym for a death threat. Kamarouka became one of the most terrible symbols of the Minsk "Red Terror".
4. Chelyuskintsev Park
Today's Chelyuskintsev Park is a place where the ground remembers two terrible periods in history: Stalinist and Nazi terror. In the interwar decades, extrajudicial executions took place here in what was then the Vankovich Forest, and later — during the war — Stalag-352 camp operated here, where thousands of prisoners of war perished.
5. Pishchalovsky Castle or "Valodarka". Pre-trial detention center #1 (2 Valadarskaha Street)
Pishchalovsky Castle — or "Valodarka" — has remained a symbol of violence and repression in the very heart of the capital for almost two centuries. Since 1825, its walls have witnessed rebels, writers, political prisoners, and hundreds of people sentenced to death. It was here, in the basements, on the night of October 30, 1937, that dozens of representatives of the Belarusian intelligentsia were shot, and later — thousands of other victims of Stalinist terror and the Soviet system. In independent Belarus, new political prisoners passed through Pre-trial Detention Center #1, and by 2015 around 400 death sentences had been carried out here. Now that the prison has been relocated, authorities plan to convert Valodarka into a museum and entertainment venue — a place where people were once executed.
6. Ministry of Internal Affairs building (Haradski Val Street and 2/15 Nezalezhnasci Avenue)
In 1920, the Belarusian Extraordinary Commission — the first Soviet punitive body, which later became the NKVD and KGB — moved into the building on Valadarskaha Street where the Belarusian Ministry of Internal Affairs is located today. It was here, in the investigators' offices, that interrogations, torture, and psychological pressure took place during the Stalinist repressions. In 1937–1938, NKVD investigators received permission from Moscow for "physical coercion" — they beat detainees, deprived them of sleep, and kept people in isolation chambers. This building became a symbol of systematic terror where, according to testimonies, "moaning and screaming could be heard a block away." Today it still serves the authorities, but its walls preserve the memory of one of the darkest pages in Belarusian history.
7. KGB Pre-trial Detention Center ("Amerikanka")
The KGB Pre-trial Detention Center, known as "Amerikanka," is one of the most infamous and terrifying prisons in Belarus. Located in the inner courtyard of the KGB building in the very center of Minsk, it appeared as early as the 1920s as a prison of Soviet state security. The building, constructed in a circular form with a guard tower in the center, resembled American prisons — hence the unofficial name. Interrogations, torture, and extrajudicial executions took place here; during the "Great Terror" of 1937, dozens of figures of Belarusian culture and science were killed in its basements. Until 1953, "Amerikanka," together with Pishchalovsky Castle, served as a place of execution, and later became a KGB investigative detention center. To this day, people accused of "crimes against state security" are held in this prison. Notable political prisoners have been held here, including Raman Pratasevich, Viktor and Eduard Babaryka, Maxim Znak, and Liliya Ulasava. This place remains a living symbol of the continuity of repression — from the Stalinist era to contemporary Belarus.
8. Kurapaty
Kurapaty is a forested area outside Minsk where, from the summer of 1937, the NKVD secretly shot and buried thousands of people in mass graves. After the war, Soviet authorities covered their tracks, and the truth about the site only emerged in 1988 thanks to research by Zyanon Pazniak, which transformed Kurapaty into a people's memorial and a symbol of Stalinist crimes. The exact number of victims is unknown, and the memory of the site remains to this day a subject of controversy, vandalism, and pressure.
9. Forest in Stsyapanka and Tsanava's Dacha
The former Vankovich estate in Slyapyanka is a place where history connects tragic and symbolic layers of the past. After nationalization in the 1920s, agricultural institutions and an NKVD school operated here, and nearby was a forest where, according to testimonies, executions took place. It was here in the 1930s that students first noticed camouflaged graves. In the late 1930s, a dacha of Lavrenti Tsanava, the head of Belarusian state security, appeared in that same forest, where the renowned actor and director Solomon Mikhoels was murdered in 1948. In 2024, during construction on Parnikavaya Street in this area, human remains were again discovered — evidence that the soil of Slyapyanka still conceals undiscovered pages of Belarusian history.
10. Loshytsa Ravine
Loshytsa Ravine is one of the most terrible sites of Stalinist terror near Minsk. On the territory of the former Lyubansky estate in the 1920s–30s, an NKVD school and a base for Soviet saboteurs operated, and executions of "enemies of the people" took place in the surrounding forest. According to testimonies, shootings occurred here almost daily in 1937, with possibly up to 10,000 people killed. After the war, attempts were made to fill in and build over the area, but the public preserved its memory. In 1995, a cross "To the Victims of Bolshevik Terror" was erected in Chorny Yar, which stood for nearly three decades until it disappeared in 2024 — a symbol of how difficult it is in Belarus to preserve the memory of the past.
11. Tivali (Aurora cinema district)
In the 1930s, mass executions may have taken place on the territory of the Tivali state farm, where an animal burial ground was located. When construction of residential blocks began in the 1960s, workers discovered human remains among animal bones — bound with wire and with bullet holes in the skulls. According to some accounts, the traces were destroyed — the bones were burned and reburied. There is speculation that around three hundred railway workers, executed on the orders of Lazar Kaganovich during the "Great Terror" of 1938, may have been buried here. Today this place is perceived as yet another silent symbol of Stalinist crimes in Minsk.
12. Trostinets / Blagovshchina
The Blagovshchina Memorial Complex, opened in 2018 outside Minsk, was erected on the site of one of the largest death camps of World War II — a branch of Trostinets. Here the Nazis killed hundreds of thousands of civilians and deported Jews from across Europe. But the history of this place began earlier: in the late 1930s, according to testimonies, the NKVD may have carried out executions in the surrounding forest, and in June 1941 — the destruction of columns of political prisoners during the evacuation of prisons. After the war, Soviet authorities sought to erase the traces — a city landfill was even created on the site of former burials. Today Blagovshchina is a place where the tragic layers of two dictatorships intertwine, and where the earth still bears witness to the crimes of both Nazism and Stalinism.
13. Northern Cemetery
The Northern Cemetery in Minsk is one of those places where, according to human rights defenders and families of the condemned, the bodies of people executed by Belarusian courts were buried. Bodies of those not returned to relatives after execution likely ended up here. It was here that Svyatlana Zhuk fruitlessly searched for the burial of her son Andrei, who was executed in 2010.
14. Bathhouse at 20A Fabrychna Street
During the investigation into the disappearance of politician Viktor Hanchar, material evidence was found indicating his violent disappearance. Near the bathhouse where the attack allegedly occurred, investigators discovered fragments of car headlights, braking marks and signs of a car striking a tree, as well as blood stains. Forensic DNA analysis confirmed: it was Viktor Hanchar's blood.
15. Supreme Court
The Supreme Court of Belarus plays a key role in the process of reviewing cases related to the death penalty. It acts as an appellate body with the authority to uphold or overturn a sentence.
16. Minsk Regional Court
The Minsk Regional Court is the main judicial body that hands down most death sentences in Belarus. It is here that high-profile cases begin their proceedings, with the Supreme Court later serving only as an appellate body.
17. Kastrychnickaja Metro Station
On April 11, 2011, an explosion at Kastrychnickaja station claimed 15 lives and became the only terrorist attack in the history of the Minsk metro. Those convicted in the case, Dzmitry Kanavalau and Uladzislau Kavalyou, were quickly executed despite doubts about the fairness of the trial. Kavalyou's case became a symbol of lawlessness and turned public opinion against the death penalty in Belarus.
18. Administration of the President of the Republic of Belarus, Minsk, 38 Karl Marx Street
The Administration of the President of Belarus at 38 Karl Marx Street is where the final decision on pardoning those sentenced to death is made. It is the signature of the head of state that determines whether a sentence will be carried out or commuted. In March 2010, a picket against the death penalty was held near the building, after which human rights defenders Ales Bialiatski, Iryna Toustik, and Valentin Stefanovich were detained and sent to Akrestsin detention center.
19. 9 Zhukouskaha Street
The building at 9 Zhukouskaha Street in Minsk is the place from which former Minister of Internal Affairs Yury Zakharanka was abducted on May 7, 1999. According to testimony from the former head of Pre-trial Detention Center #1, Aleh Alkayeu, the politician was shot that same night by a special group that carried out death sentences. Zakharanka's disappearance became one of the most prominent and tragic cases in the history of independent Belarus, connected to political killings and state violence.