Jablonowski Palace in Jablonovo (Shchitsyce) - a palace and garden establishment located in the Mostovsk district of the Grodno region of the Republic of Belarus, about 4 km east of Lunna, near the village of Shchitsyce and the old riverbed of the Nemunas. The former residence on the territory of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania of the Novogrudok voivode Jozef Aleksander Jablonowski coat of arms Prus III, then belonging successively to the Jablonowskis, the Voronets (?), the Eyssmonts and the Lubienskis. It exists in a rudimentary state, with the ruins of a manor chapel from the second half of the 18th century, fragments of outbuildings and traces of the composition of the courtyard and park from the 19th century preserved.

History of the Jablonov estate and mansion
The name Jablonov (Jablonov Litewski, Jablonovo) was given to the estate in the Trakai province around the middle of the 18th century, when the surrounding estate came into the hands of Prince Jozef Aleksander Jablonovsky coat of arms Prus III (1711-1777). Earlier, the Radzivanovichi (Radziwinovichi) village on the Nemunas River and the Słowikowszczyzna manor were identified with part of the estate. They belonged to the Sapiehs and were connected with the Volpyn starosty of considerable size, remaining in the family's hands at least from the mid-17th century. The last Sapiehs' grantee of the starosty was Kazimierz Leon, general of the Lithuanian artillery and voivode of Brzeskolitza (d. 1738), who left it to his widow Karolina Teresa of Radziwiłł. In 1740, thanks to his marriage to Radziwiłłówna, it came into the possession of Jozef Aleksander Jabłonowski, a representative of a wealthy Crown family, who at that time tied his career to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Around 1748, the duke undertook the construction of a sumptuous mansion on a raw root in the Neman estate, which was to be his new ancestral capital. On his part, this was undoubtedly a manifestation of his links with the Grand Duchy, confirmed by his receiving the dignity of Lithuanian stolnik (1744) and then the office of Novgorod voivode (1755). In the second half of the 1750s, however, Jabłonowski ceased to be interested in his Lithuanian residence when he moved permanently to Lachowiec in Volhynia. Probably plans to build a private town accompanying the residence were never realised.

After the duke emigrated abroad for good in 1768, the management of his estate passed to his nephew, the Poznań voivode Antoni Barnaba Jabłonowski. Finally, after the death of Józef Aleksander, in 1777 his estate was officially taken over by his minor son from his second marriage to Franciszka Wiktoria Woroniecka, August Dobrogost Jabłonowski (1767-1799). It is possible that August Dobrogost may have sold the Jablonov estate to his distant relative Maksymilian Voroniecki.

The fate of Jablonov in the next half-century is unknown. In the mid-19th century, it was a middle-ranking noble seat and belonged to Octavius Eyssmont of the Korab coat of arms, married to Helena of Sołtan, a starostess from Slonim. Then, in 1870, it came into the possession of Henryk Łubieński, who married their only daughter Zofia. In 1884 the Łubieńskis disposed of the estate, which then, possibly until the Second World War, belonged successively to three Orthodox residents of Łunna. It was purchased from the Łubieńskis by a certain Petrulowicz, who parcelled out the estate. He sold a part of it with the palace, park, outbuildings and chapel, with a total area of about 15 hectares, to a Russian named Oznobishyn, whose ownership remained at least until 1914. The remainder of the estate was also owned by another Russian, lawyer Tsvetov from Lunna, at least until 1928.

Jablonov Palace
The palace layout, conceived on a grand scale, was essentially built around 1748-1753. The designer is unknown. In the following years, work on the garden and interior decoration continued, and plans were made to build a town with a town hall and two churches (a Roman Catholic "parish" and a Greek Catholic temple for the Basilian fathers) using funds from the prince. The earliest information comes from 1749, when Jabłonowski arrived at his newly built residence, "where a magnificent and comfortable palace was being erected in a lovely location". In 1752, the duke was buying paintings, furniture, clocks and upholstery for decoration in Gdansk and Königsberg.

The palace and garden complex, with a manorial chapel in the front part and coupled to the town, was laid out on a north-south axis, in a Baroque layout 'between the courtyard and the garden'. Access to the residence was provided by two gates: from the west by the so-called 'Grodno' gate and from the south by the main gate, located on the axis of the palace and called 'Volpinskaya' (from the side of the town of Volpa). The single-storey, probably brick palace was picturesquely situated at the top of the scarp of a bend in the Nemunas River (now an oxbow lake). It was given an elongated rectangular plan on an east-west line and must have been a truly spacious building. In 1752 the owner wrote that it had "30 rooms, and from corner to corner cubits 230 [about 137 m]". To the front, the palace was accompanied by a courtyard in which the outbuildings were arranged in a horseshoe shape. At the edge of the courtyard was a chapel, which was an important accent to the setting of the entrance. Founded on a central plan, it was intended as a manorial and also a burial shrine. The chapel faced the chateau and was connected to it by an axis marked by a vestigially preserved avenue of lime trees. The badly ruined building is now the only significant relic of the layout. The main part of the garden establishment, probably created as a baroque parterre, possibly enriched with bosquets, was most probably situated in the north, behind the palace and connected in terms of composition with a 700-arc-long [over 400 m] canal, leading out from the Nemunas. The second part (with the character of a park, zoo?), called the "Volpinsky garden", was attached to the establishment on the south-eastern side. At the foot of the escarpment, at the end of the river bend, the duke built a marina ("harbour") for rafts. In the 19th century, the regular composition was transformed into an English park, of which a partly legible layout and part of the planting remain today.

The palace built by Jablonowski survived at least until 1914 in a reduced form, adapted for use as a residential manor house. The only known view of Jablonowski's palace dates from the second half of the 19th century (drawing by Napoleon Orda from 1861-1877). It shows the rear elevation of a large, one-storey building with a traditional manor house form, equipped with corner alcoves and two high side annexes, one of them in the form of a gallery. Also dating from this time is the description of "an extremely original, huge house with bizarrely folded wings. Huge, brick-lined, dark and full of cells corridors, thick walls, casseroles under the whole house, several large empty halls, would rather give it the semblance of an old monastery". The palace was destroyed during the hostilities of 1914-1918, with remnants of the walls still standing before 1939.