Prince Daniel's Stronghold in the Exhibition

The history exhibition opens with a module on the prehistory of the Chełm area: the earliest traces of human presence and settlement in the Neolithic, the Bronze Age and the Iron Age. The same section tells the story of the tower and settlement at Bieławin.

The second module moves on to the Middle Ages, when Chełm, probably linked at first with the so-called Cherven Towns, became part of the Principality of Galicia-Volhynia in the 13th century. Thanks to Prince Daniel Romanovich it grew into one of the main centres on the Bug and served as the capital of the principality. Next to a powerful residential and defensive complex, a settlement developed at the foot of the hill and became the seed of the future town.

Later centuries weakened the stronghold, but the settlement survived and attracted newcomers from Ruthenia and Poland. The third module shows how in 1387 Queen Jadwiga incorporated Chełm, together with Red Ruthenia, into Poland, and how in 1392 Władysław Jagiełło granted the town Magdeburg rights. Chełm lay on the border between the eastern and western Slavic worlds, under Catholic and Orthodox influence, and Poland, Ruthenia, Lithuania and Hungary competed for these lands.