Amid lovely countryside, Yelets is a relaxing town that looks like a slice out of mid-19th-century Russia. Streets are lined with colonnaded buildings and wood and brick houses, while the town’s showpiece, beautiful Ascension Cathedral, is visible from kilometres around. Tucked into the town’s tidy streets are another half-dozen working churches and cathedrals, as well [...]
With its birch forests, idyllic rivers and endless rolling steppe, Western European Russia is an enticing vision straight out of Russian folklore. Those seeking the soul of Old Rus would do well to explore this historically rich region, as the charming old villages, photogenic fortress towns and gold-domed monasteries are just part of the lure.
Upon reaching the industrial shores of Vo- ronezh, your first reaction may be to swallow in dread. Black, belching smokestacks line the riverbank, and in addition to the smog, an opaque gritty pessimism hangs over the town. Indeed, Voronezh is a city scraping and clawing its way out of the Soviet era, with few immediate [...]
A pleasant but sleepy town on the edge of the sea, Svetlogorsk (formerly Rauschen, founded in 1228) lies just 35km northwest of Kaliningrad and makes for a quick and pleasant getaway from the city. The narrow beach is backed by steep sandy slopes, and pretty wooden houses set among tree-lined streets dot the little town. [...]
Set along the banks of the tranquil Polist River, Staraya Russa has the idyllic charm of a 19th-century village. Here, Dostoevsky spent summers and wrote much of The Brothers Karamazov, and the town is still today something of a mecca for literary enthusiasts.
Here is the forest. Shadow and silence. Stately poplars whisper high above your head; the long, hanging birch-branches hardly stir…The small golden voice of the robin rings out in its innocent, prattling joy…
The area south of St Petersburg, reaching roughly from the Gulf of Finland to the headwaters of the Volga in the Valdai Hills north of Moscow is a must for aficionados of Russian history and culture. Novgorod, with its well-preserved kremlin and handsome cathedral has claims to being Russia’s birthplace and, further west, the stout [...]
Set on rolling, ever-changing steppe, this region has small, attractive towns and ragged, industrial cities. Among the highlights are the sleepy village Yelets, the revitalised old streets of Smolensk, the literary-minded town Oryol and nearby Spasskoe-Lutovinovo, Turgenev’s lushly landscaped estate. The rather Soviet cities of Voronezh and Kursk, while omitted from many itineraries, have some [...]
Behind the walls of this old city you’ll find well-landscaped parks, a magnificent old cathedral, a smattering of museums and a youthful population breathing new life into this historic town. Its elegant music hall is the jewel of the town, and the regular concerts held here as well as its annual music festival keep Smolensk [...]
Situated 265km southwest of St Petersburg and close to both the Latvian and Estonian borders, Pskov is a pretty town with a long, proud history, which you’ll be confronted with at nearly every turn. At the heart of Pskov lies a riverside kremlin with a beautiful cathedral inside, and from the old walls that still [...]