Description of the attraction
Zhvanetsky castle was built in the town of the same name, which was first mentioned in 1431. Then it was a small settlement near the borders of Russia, Austria-Hungary and Romania (now Khmelnytsky, Chernivtsi and Ternopil regions converge here). Only at the beginning of the 18th century, the population began to increase due to the fact that the headman of Kamenets (Kamenets-Podolsk is located 18 km from Zhvanets), Valenty Kalenovsky, built a castle here. It occupied almost a hectare of area and consisted of five-pointed walls, about 85 meters long, at the corners of which there were towers. There were two gates to the castle, the central ones were in the center of the western wall, the others were in the corner, on the southeastern side of the town.
The Zhvanetsky castle is located in the place where the Zhvanchik river flows into the Dniester. Located between two castles, Kamenetsky and Khotinsky, it was also often attacked and sieged. So, in 1621, during the Polish-Turkish war, the Poles plundered Zhvanets, and the castle was severely damaged. Later it was restored by the Pole Stanislav Lyantskoronsky, the owner of Zhvanets.
In 1653, during the Cossack-Polish war, it was besieged by the Tatars together with the Cossacks of Bohdan Khmelnitsky, and again suffered from destruction. Further, in 1672, it was captured by the Turks, who were moving to Kamenets. True, then he went to the conquerors without a fight, since all the defenders of the castle fled to Kamenets in advance.
Later, when the Turks took possession of Podillia (1672-1699), the Poles seized the castle twice, but it did not remain in their possession for long. Only in 1699 Zhvanets and the castle began to rebuild again, at that time it was the property of the Lyantskoronskys.
The last military action Zhvanetsky castle underwent in 1768, then the Turks and Tatars staged a mutiny, captured and plundered the town and the castle, followed by the castle was captured by the Confederates. After Zhvanets passed to Russia, and the castle lost its status of a defensive structure, no one was interested in it, and it began to collapse. To our time, only a part of one tower and a small fragment of the wall vault have survived.
