Khatyn Memorial is one of the most powerful and emotional places to visit near Minsk, and a visit here helps to understand what Belarus went through during the Second World War. This complex often leaves an even deeper impression than the Museum of the Great Patriotic War, because you are standing right on the site of a burned village and walking among monuments under the open sky.​

The memorial is located about 54 km from Minsk in the Logoisk district, surrounded by forest and fields. Getting there is easiest by taxi from Minsk or by booking a private transfer or tour on a travel website, which many visitors do instead of using public transport with transfers.​

Khatyn is a large architectural and sculptural complex of about 50 hectares, dedicated to the village destroyed together with its residents and to hundreds of other Belarusian villages burned by the Nazis. At the center stands the six-meter bronze statue “The Unconquered Man” holding a dead child, and around you see symbolic village houses with chimneys and bells, a Cemetery of Villages with 185 symbolic graves, an Eternal Flame, and the “Tree of Life” with the names of more than 400 destroyed but later rebuilt villages.