Novo­gru­dok Cas­tle was one of the best fortress­es of the Grand Duchy of Lithua­nia. It was built some­what dif­fer­ent­ly than Ger­man cas­tles in the Baltic states: at first the fortress was wood­en, in the sec­ond half of the 12th cen­tu­ry they built one stone tow­er sur­round­ed by wood­en walls, and only at the turn of the 14th-15th cen­turies. Wood was com­plete­ly aban­doned, using instead not only stone, but also more mod­ern brick. The cas­tle exist­ed until the mid­dle of the 17th cen­tu­ry, after which it was destroyed in a series of Russ­ian-Pol­ish wars and the sub­se­quent North­ern War between Rus­sia and Swe­den. The ruins were tak­en into the court­yards by local res­i­dents, the remains of the cas­tle walls were used to pave the city streets, so in the 1920s, when the Pol­ish gov­ern­ment began to think about the pro­tec­tion and con­ser­va­tion of the cas­tle, frag­ments of only two tow­ers remained in it — Kos­ti­ol­na and Szczy­tov­ka. On a spa­cious hill­top, these ruins look won­der­ful. True, in recent years they have begun to be restored, so on one of the tow­ers you will see mod­ern mason­ry.