Grodno is, perhaps, the most European city in Belarus and therefore a very attractive option for independent excursion trips and sightseeing at any time of the year. One day is enough for a brief acquaintance with the city - tested from personal experience :) But if you want to touch the history of the city closer, see the surrounding area and find something new and surprising - then you can stay overnight in one of the estates in the Grodno region or in hotels in Grodno. Due to the terrain, the city's layout is not symmetrical, so in Grodno you can often get lost in back streets and narrow streets. But in any case, all the roads will sooner or later lead either to Ozheshko Street, which turns into Sovetskaya, or to the Neman. Orzeshko Street starts from the railway station; on the way to the city center you can see the Lutheran Church, the building of the University. Y. Kupala, Intercession Cathedral, Gilibert Park, square with a monument to Lenin. By the way, the previous names of Ozheshko street were Roskosh, Sadovaya, Muravyovskaya, and since the 1920s. she received the name of the Polish writer Eliza Orzeshko, who was born in the Grodno region, and since 1870 lived in Grodno. Her house was located in the house on Sadovaya Street, 17; now there is a branch of the library named after E.F. Karsky and a small museum. Across the Gorodnichanka River there is a monument to Eliza Ozheshko by sculptor R. Zerich.On both sides of Orzeszko Street lies Zhilibert Park, which was founded in 1775 and has long been considered one of the best botanical gardens in Europe.J.E. Gilibert was an outstanding scientist, teacher and educator of his time. He came to Grodno from Lyon at the invitation of Anthony Tizengauz, opened the Medical Academy, a pharmacy and founded a garden. Studied plants and their beneficial properties. On the territory of the park there are statues of the Grodno resident - a girl thoughtfully sitting in a clearing, the creator of the park, Gilibert, and the outstanding architect of Grodno - Giuseppe Sacco.The pedestrian street Sovetskaya (formerly called Vilenskaya, Dominicanskaya, Mostovaya, Gimnasialnaya, Sobornaya and Hindenburgstrasse) is filled with establishments where you can have a snack, lunch and a delicious meal, or shop at the Neman shopping center or small shops and souvenir shops. The development of Sovetskaya in the form in which we know it now was formed in the 16th-19th centuries, when stone buildings began to appear in the city, housing hotels, shops and stores. On the street there were houses and apartments of famous people, and more than one generation of great minds and political figures came out of the men's classical gymnasium, which was located in house No. 6 on this street.The center of life in the era of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was the trading (town hall) square, which was covered by seven streets of the city. On the square there was a town hall, houses of merchants and nobles, monasteries, churches and churches. It was the historical center of the city, in which there are monuments, public gardens, shops, cafes and simply pleasant views with beautiful low houses. Now this is Soviet Square, on which, on one side, rises the Cathedral Church of St. Francis Xavier, and on the other, the church and monastery of the Bernardines. The Church of St. Francis Xavier is one of three churches in Belarus, which is called a minor basilica. It was built in the 17th century and was part of the Jesuit monastery complex. The height of the temple towers is 65 meters; on the left tower there is a clock with a mechanism from 1671 - this is the only clock in Europe that has survived from that time and works properly. The main altar contains more than 40 figures, and the iconostasis is one of the highest Baroque altars in Europe.Near the Farny Church there is the very first pharmacy in Belarus, where there is a cozy museum with collections of ancient pharmaceutical supplies, the herbarium of Eliza Ozheshko and other medical artifacts. The pharmacy building was built in 1709 by the Jesuits and it was one of the first pharmacies in Europe.The Church of the Finding of the Holy Cross is the oldest operating Catholic church in Grodno and one of the oldest in western Belarus. The first wooden church on this site was built in 1494, and the stone monastery was founded at the turn of the 16th-17th centuries. The church was consecrated in 1618 by Bishop Evstafiy Volovich of Vilnius. The church has preserved a functioning organ from the 18th century.