20 Roubles The Belts of Slutsk. Collecting

Slutsk belts — hand-woven silk and gold-thread sashes produced in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth from the mid-18th century — were among the most expensive luxury goods in Eastern Europe, with a single belt sometimes costing as much as a serf's annual labor output. Production centered on the Słuck manufactory founded by Prince Michał Kazimierz Radziwiłł around 1758, which trained local weavers to replicate Persian and Ottoman textile techniques. Fewer than 200 authenticated original belts survive today, scattered across museums in Minsk, Warsaw, Kraków, and Vilnius.

This coin is part of a multi-issue series from the National Bank of Belarus dedicated to the belts, reflecting their status as a symbol of Belarusian cultural heritage — a designation that carries political weight given the object's origins in a Polish-Lithuanian noble tradition.