A Blogger Used AI To Bring The “heart Of Minsk” To Life

• 28.10.2026, 14:32

Where is it located?

A blogger colorized old photos of Nemiga and showed what the neighborhood looked like before the future Bogdanovich Street was built through it and a shopping center was constructed—a shopping center that almost no one visits these days. He posted the photos on the social media platform Threads.

“Minsk, mid-1960s,” he wrote. “The final years of old Nemiga. In less than five years, the most insidious architectural crime in the history of our capital would begin.”

Many Minsk residents wrote that they still remember what the city center looked like 60 years ago and regret that it isn’t as cozy now. The website Charter97.org quotes some comments under the post:
— These photos look so cozy. Like Vilnius or Warsaw. It’s a shame it’s not like that here anymore.

— “Thanks” to the communists for destroying the heart of Minsk.

— Nowadays, it would be possible to create a magnificent, harmonious atmosphere there, especially if the reconstruction of the area from the Rakovsky suburb to Revolyutsionnaya Street were to follow at least the route of Troitsky Street rather than Zybitskaya Street, that is, with an emphasis on authenticity rather than commercial exploitation.

— For some reason, these barbaric plans to “improve” the city actively affected Minsk, but somehow didn’t touch the capitals of other republics, especially the Baltic ones.

— I was in sixth grade back then. I remember how my friends and I used to wander through houses that had already been vacated for demolition—with broken doors and windows, and the remains of furniture and various odds and ends.