Rylsk (Russian: Рыльск) is a town and the administrative center of Rylsky District of Kursk Oblast, Russia, located on the right bank of the Seym River (Dnieper's basin) 124 kilometres (77 mi) southwest of Kursk. Population: 15,667 (2010 Census preliminary results);[1] 17,603 (2002 Census);[2] 19,472 (1989 Census);[3] 19,000 (1974).
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Rylsk was first mentioned in a chronicle in 1152 as one of the Severian towns. It had become the center of an appanage principality by the end of the 12th century before coming into the hands of Lithuanian rulers sometime in the 14th century. Casimir IV made a grant of it to Dmitry Shemyaka's son Ivan, who had settled in Lithuania. Ivan's son Vasily defected to Muscovy, but Lituanians held the town until 1522. During the Time of Troubles, it was one of the first towns to welcome False Dmitry as the Tsar. After the Ukraine's integration into Imperial Russia, Rylsk capitalized on the trade between Little Russia and Great Russia. A great number of merchants resided in the town, whose population remains almost the same as a century ago.
Soviet authority in Rylsk was established in November 1917. The town was occupied by the German army from October 5, 1941 to August 30, 1943.
The town does not retain many marks of antiquity. Its oldest buildings are three churches of the monastery of St. Nicholas, all erected in the mid-18th century. Some of the most prominent buildings in the town were commissioned by the Shelikhov merchants, the most famous of which, Grigory Shelikhov, was born in the town and has a monument erected to his memory on the central square. The foremost of the town's churches are the Uspensky Cathedral (1811) and the Pokrovsky Cathedral (1822), both designed in a vernacular Neoclassical idiom and furnished with very lofty belltowers.
In the environs of Rylsk, two manors are of infinite interest to the student of Russian history. The village of Ivanovskoe, 20 km east of Rylsk, has a summer residence of Ukrainian hetman Ivan Mazepa, while Maryino, slightly to the west, used to be a seat of the princely house of Boryatinsky, who in 1815-16 built a palace and extensive English park there.
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