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 as ruins of several more. There’s also a well-stocked regional museum and a museum devoted to Soviet composer Tikhon Khrennikov.
Category: Western European Russia
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 signs of success. Construction is rampant in this large city, giving rise to everything from gleaming new churches to cookie-cutter apartment buildings – but all the scaffolding cannot conceal the poverty that afflicts most citizens here.
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. Avid sunbathers head to Zelenogradsk or the Kurshkaya Kosa for heavier beach action.
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 walls of Pskov have stood sentinel to centuries of conflict. Close to the Estonian border is the village of Izborsk, home to one of western Russia’s oldest and most atmospheric stone fortresses. You can walk in Pushkin’s footsteps at his family estate at Mikhailovskoe and book freaks will get a thrill out of Staraya Russa where Dostoevsky spent his summers and penned much of ‘The Brothers Karamazov’. If old castles and book-learning aren’t your bag, the region also offers a chance to relax by gently flowing rivers and visit almost miracle-working mineral springs.
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 worthwhile sights. Towns in this region are generally poor, with large portions of the populace unemployed and given to loitering on street corners, often in Adidas sweatclothes, for some reason. Keeping a low profile will help you to avoid offence or threats, though for the most part the residents aren’t antiforeigner or aggressive, just bored.
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 well connected to flourishing musical traditions of centuries past.
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 encircle the original settlement you can spot dozens of great-domed churches, most designed by Pskov’s own school of architects and icon painters. Unfortunately, many of the churches are closed, with few marked for renovation. However, there is an excellent museum, the Pogankin Chambers, where a great deal of the iconographic art from these churches has been collected and displayed.