NEMYRIV IN THE PODOLIA – A FORGOTTEN URBAN EXPERIMENT OF THE LATE 18TH CENTURY

 

PETRO RYCHKOV

 

The reign of the last king of Poland, Stanisław August Poniatowski (1764–1795) was a time when new ideas were welcomed and eagerly embraced in urban planning. The monarch supported a number of bold projects and encouraged similar initiatives among the more ambitious of the nobles. Of all the towns where a uniform planning scheme was implemented, the most distant from the capital was the town of Nemyriv in today’s Vinnytsia Oblast in Ukraine. The entire structure of the town was transformed owing to the involvement of Wincenty Potocki, Grand Chamberlain of the Crown. In late 1770s and early 1780s, the town was given a regular spatial arrangement, in line with the then popular ideas of classicist urbanism. Sadly, the centuries which followed have gradually obliterated the characteristic elements of the design. On the basis of little known archive sources, the author makes an attempt at tracking the fate of this one-of-a-kind urban work of art, so far quite neglected in urban studies.

 

Key words: Nemyriv, Podolia, urban planning in the Enlightenment period, urban arrangement