The text describes and photographs the palace in Swojatycze in the Novgorod district. The town of Swojatycze is briefly described. The most important buildings in the town are depicted - the church, which has paintings with Polish inscriptions and plaques indicating that the Czapscy are buried there. The founders in the town are the Plater family (Source: "Ziemia. Tygodnik Krajoznawczy Ilustrowany', Warsaw 1911, no. 10, p. 9, after: Wielkopolska Biblioteka Cyfrowa).

A modernised reading of the text

Palace in Swojatycze.

Six versts from Pogorzelce, the station of the Moscow-Brest railway, in a quiet corner of the Minsk region, in the Novogrudok district, lies the neat little town of Swojatycze, distinguished by its almost complete lack of non-Catholic population. As soon as you enter Swojatycze, you are pleasantly surprised by the huge cross in the middle of the road, a symbol that speaks so much in Lithuania.

The ordinary history of Swojatycze is evidenced by a small church with a bell tower, now an Orthodox church, dating back to the end of the first half of the last century. In the church you can still see Catholic paintings with Polish inscriptions on the walls, and read on the stone tablets that the remains of Count Czapski, the founders of the temple, and the ancestors of the present owners of the Zyberk-Plater family, are buried in the vaults.

The local people believe, however, that their dreams regarding the church will soon come true, just as they believe that, thanks to the generosity and good will of Count Henry of the Plater family, Swojatycze will soon have a nursery for children, a reading room for the elderly, a small hospital, and who knows, perhaps even a much-needed "people's house", albeit on the smallest size.

In recent times, Count Henry Plater has been unanimously elected president of the cooperative shop, as a token of his high confidence, which should undoubtedly be to the benefit of this pleasant institution; the newly elected president is thinking of setting up a volunteer fire brigade in the town, and to start with, as an incentive, he intends to organise a fire brigade from the staff of his estate, which lies just outside the town, together with a beautiful palace dating from 1772. The previous owners of Swojatycze were the Obuchowicz family, who maintained a beautiful stud farm here back in the 18th century.