Nemiga is one of the oldest streets in Minsk, located in the central part of the city. The street appeared in the twelfth century beside the Minsk Castle, running along the Nemiga River. With references to this very river in the chronicle “The Tale of Bygone Years”, Minsk is first mentioned in print.From the second half of the sixteenth century, Nemiga became a Jewish street, full of small shops and stores. The street was about 4-4.5 meters wide and houses were quite tight to one another. Arched gates, called brahms, stood in front of entrances to courtyards, which housed wells, sheds, latrines and cesspools. The brahms were diverse – wooden, wrought-iron, with wickets – and were usually bolted at night.The Cold Synagogue was the primary landmark of Jewish Nemiga, and today is memorialized by a commemorative plaque with text in Belarusian and English on the building at 17, Svobody Square.