The city is not a paradise for traditional culture and architecture freaks, who love cobbled old streets, but Minsk provides a unique combination of city that is half sleeping in eighties era of Soviet Union and half living a turbulent life of a young-capitalism age. The typical tourist attractions mainly include churches, that are finaly used for what they have been build for and parks and memorials from the Soviet times.
White-walled Orthodox church was originally build in 1642 as Catholic convent. The Western baroque style first hosted Bernardine nuns and after the Polish rule was over, it was handed to Russian Orthodox church. Although Bolsheviks ceased religous ceremonies, today the building once again serves it's spiritual purpose.
The oddity of Minsk comparing to other metropolis is the city centre distict build mainly in early 1950's. The impressive buildings just supported the regimes policy of showing dominant rule and make down the individuality of its citizens. Buildings like Belarusian State University, Main Post Office, GUM shopping centre or the Twin Gates opposite of railway station were showpieces of a country that supressed freedom of its people.
This strange building era did not end with the fall of communism (even in case of Belarus, there are still doubts, if all got that fact that there are no more bricks in Berlin wall). In 2006 a twenty-three storey building in form of a diamond was opened, which serves as the National Library of Belarus. The walls are covered by 4646 LED screens creating one of largest monitors in the world (1392 inches screen).
