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Moscow is changing fast, but north of the russian capital, journalist Andy Potts discovers a precious Golden ring of historic towns.

Picture Perfect

Above the eternal tranquility by Isaac Levitan – The State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.

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It’s a place of monasteries, gleaming golden domes and archaic festivals; a world where history and legend merge

The scattering of traditional one-storey wooden homes is a gallery of domestic pride and decorative ingenuity

A modest wooden church stands on a high riverbank. the broad stream flows peacefully by and a vast sky dominates a landscape

of simple beauty…Works like Above the Eternal

Tranquility have earned Isaac levitan his reputation as russia’s foremost landscape painter of the 19th century. For Muscovites, who braved the winter weather to queue in their thousands for a recent blockbuster exhibition of

the master’s work, these are images from another world: far removed from the petro-dollar frenzy of today’s fast-changing city. Yet just a few hundred kilometres to the north, russia’s Zolotoye Koltso – the Golden ring – is that other world. It’s a place of monasteries, gleaming golden domes and archaic festivals; a world where history and legend merge over a glass of mead-like medovukha, and the slow, wide volga gurgles timelessly towards the shores of a distant southern sea.

levitan’s former home in plyos (Плёсь) makes a good starting point to explore the Golden ring. plyos itself is a small village, nestled among hills on the bank of the volga and, yes, high above it a modest wooden church still stands, overlooking a landscape that clearly influenced the artist’s vision. A small museum occupies his old waterfront home and, although levitan’s greatest works are held in the big-city galleries of Moscow and St petersburg, the exhibition does a good job of putting his art into the context of russia’s Slavic cultural revival, including several charming miniatures and studies.

the slopes below that church may be busier than the wide-open spaces of Eternal Tranquility, but the scattering of traditional one-storey wooden homes is a gallery of domestic pride and decorative ingenuity. each is set in its own garden, a handy source of fresh food and – especially – the flowers with which no russian table can be considered complete; each house boasts its own distinctive, brightly painted window frames. It’s easy to imagine a russian little red riding Hood making

her way through the forest to visit her grandmother in a cosy house like these.

the forests of the Golden ring also play a pivotal role in russia’s history: about 65km up-river from plyos, the small town of Kostroma (Кострома) claims to be the starting point of the romanov dynasty, the family of tsars who ruled this vast empire for more than 300 years up until the 1917 revolution. the peaceful present belies a turbulent past in the so-called ‘time of troubles’ between the

death of Ivan the terrible (heirless in 1584) and the eventual succession of Mikhail romanov in 1613. Sensing weakness, both poland and lithuania saw their chance to grab the lands around the volga, and it was here that a Kostroma woodsman, Ivan Susanin, entered the story. With marauding poles close to finding romanov in his hide-out at the Ipatievsky Monastery, legend has it that a local logger led the polish troops into the dense woodland, claiming he would take them to prince’s hiding place. by the time the soldiers realised they’d been duped, and angrily butchered their guide, it was too late for them to find their way out of the leafy labyrinth, and romanov was safe. this historical legend became an enduring example of patriotism, which has endured the rapid reappraisal of national values that accompanied the rise and fall

of the Soviet union, and was immortalised in Mikhail Glinka’s opera A Life for the Tsar – regarded as the birth of a truly russian operatic style just as levitan and the peredvizhiki (wanderers) forged a distinctively national school of art.

Modern day Kostroma is a handsome town, with a lively, authentic market at its heart and a string of beautiful churches under the gaze of the slender yellow watchtower attached to the old fire station. Now a museum, it overlooks onion domes and stalls offering the fruits of those historic forests – berries, mushrooms and the like – and the volga, as it flows past Ipatievsky. that monastery,

aside from its history, is one of the glories of orthodox church architecture, with five lofty domes and an interior distinguished by floor-to-ceiling frescoes and a powerful image of christ looking down. A service is worth attending, as the ancient call-

and-response chants in High Slavonic mingle with waft of incense to recreate a centuries-old ritual that powerfully evokes the mysteries of faith in a dimly candle-lit hall.

Against this background it is perhaps unsurprising that Kostroma has rebranded itself as the home of russia’s ‘dusha’ (душа), an almost untranslatable concept tied in with the nation’s soul. unlike other national ideas, such as britain’s bulldog spirit or the American dream, this tends to be referenced as an explanation for the enduring ‘otherness’ of a country that remains poised at a crossroads between europe and Asia,

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Images clockwise from top: Monastery of Saint Ipaty interior frescoes,Kostroma; Plyos; wooden houses, Plyos; musician, Kostroma; St Basil’s Cathedral, Moscow

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russia

and that firmly follows its own cultural course between east and west. to précis 19th-century writer Fyodor tyutchev, it is impossible to understand russia, one can only believe in her. Kostroma’s resting place of russia’s soul may not offer further enlightenment – but the town’s distinctive charm is certainly something easy to believe in.

Belief is also at the heart of Suzdal (Суздаль), a remarkable collection of monasteries around one of the best-preserved

Kremlins in the country. once this was one of the great centres of power and wealth in medieval russia – icons displayed in Moscow’s tretyakov Gallery depict the battles between the forces of Suzdal and the northern stronghold of Novgorod veliky – but it had the good fortune to decline in prominence as russia raced towards industrialisation in the 1800s. While the Soviets continued to develop factories in the nearby cities of Ivanovo (textiles) and Yaroslavl (tyre manufacture), Suzdal was designated a ‘museum city’ and left to function as an enduring monument to ancient Slavic architecture and culture.

Naturally, this caused the communists some ideological angst: the new atheist state was forced to recast the spectacular churches as ‘museums of atheism’ or examples of the artistic genius of the nameless proletariat. but these sometimes awkward compromises ensured that not only did the buildings themselves survive – sky-blue domes studded with golden stars, overlooking white walls – they survived in something approaching their original environs. low-lying meadowland, often blurred by a haze of morning mist, frames a timeless town, which rises like a vision of a lost era. If much of russia roughly juxtaposes ancient and modern, with little thought given to harmonising the landscape, Suzdal represents a rare example of genuine conservation in a land where helter-skelter change can often appear to swamp the past beneath a forest of cranes.

Among the local treats, Suzdalskaya Medovukha is the tipple of choice. A fermented honey drink, it was traditionally prepared by the local monks, and the restaurant in the Kremlin serves freshly brewed samples. It comes in various flavours, including a fiery horseradish

Each year, the town devotes a weekend to all things green and slender – with songs and plays devoted to this nutritious staple, a host of cucumber-inspired arts and crafts

version known as Khrenovukha, and is best served chilled on a warm afternoon as the sun gleams on the church opposite and the shadows stretch across

the meadows. but despite this drink’s fame, the town’s biggest culinary festival honours another: the humble cucumber.

It’s impossible to delve very deeply into russian cuisine without sinking one’s teeth into this vegetable. It appears sliced and pickled to accompany vodka, freshly diced into the refreshing cold summer soup known as okroshka (an acquired taste built on the distinctive fermented

rye-bread drink, kvas) or used to decorate countless salads. Suzdal claims to have begun the cultivation of the cucumber 500 years ago. thus, each year, the

town devotes a weekend to all things green and slender – with songs and plays devoted to this nutritious staple, a host of cucumber-inspired arts and crafts and, as the grand finale, a cucumber-eating contest. this year’s festival is scheduled for July 20, just one example of how, in this little corner of russia, tradition is preserved. And that makes for such a refreshing change. •

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Cathedral, Kostrama