Вильна в описании немецкого путешественника Самуэля Кихеля (1586 г.)

ENIn 1584-1587 Samuel Kiechel, a young German traveller from the town of Ulm, made a big journey. He visited many countries of Europe, Middle East and Africa. In 1586 he arrived in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and came to Hrodna and Vilnius where he lived from the 1st to the 13th July that year. During his travelling the young man put down his impressions and everything he saw and heard in the strange country. Samuel Kiechel's itinerary was published in 1820 in retelling and in 1866 in the original form in Germany. Russian and Polish historiography are familiar with it but for Belarusian so as for Lithuanian historiography this narrative source was unknown till the last time. Meanwhile Kiechel's observations contain much information about the capital of the Grand Duchy ofLithuania. In particular he wrote about the Tatars who lived near Vilnius, about the capital's inhabitants with many Germans among them, about local customs, trade and crafts, about the costs of goods and travel. There is a description of houses and Vilnius castle. So the foreigner noticed that the town was poorly fortified and had bad and mostly wooden building. Like other western visitors he was very much surprised at a great number of confessional groups and religious tolerance as well as at liberty for their cult. This Shvabian felt here like in many other European countries. But his observations in Vilnius came to a sharp contrast with customs discovered in Pskov with its very closed and suspicious people where foreigners could not come into a town without official permission.