Suzdal

  Suzdal seems to be the most famous city on the "Golden Ring" route; it is a kind of Mecca for tourists. In 1983, when the International Travel Commentators Association was to choose the prize winner for its honorable prize "The Golden Apple" among most notable places its choice deservedly fell on Suzdal. Thus, Suzdal became the first in the USSR, and it still remains the only city in Russia that has received wide international recognition for the preservation of the monuments of national culture, their usage for developing tourism, and for promoting cultural and historical heritage. Suzdal is a unique town. From the XIV century it became the centre of the Suzdal episcopacy – the richest Orthodox Church organization. Due to this fact many trinities and monasteries were built during the long period of time. "A museum in the open air" is a most exact description of this ancient Russian town that has about two hundred ancient monuments of secular and religious architecture clustered on the area of nine square kilometers, and the calm waters of the Kamenka River have been reflecting the silhouettes of the numerous churches for about a thousand years. Today the town is an outstanding architectural museum, containing more examples of period architecture than any other Russian town, and its original architectural topography was retained. The town population is 12,000. Tourism here is high, not only because of the educational value of the locale, but also because Suzdal has preserved a picturesque timelessness which visitors find interesting as well as relaxing.
Among architectural monuments of special interest for tourists is the Kremlin. The present-day Kremlin was the original core around which the medieval ensemble of Suzdal grew up. The most ancient highlight of the Kremlin – the white-stone Cathedral of the Nativity of the Virgin was constructed at the beginning of the 13th century. The church embodies the former majesty of Suzdal, which had its flourishing period in the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. The Archbishop’s Palace, the construction of the fifteenth century, was the seat of Suzdal’s ecclesiastical authorities. At present the suite of the Archbishop’s Palace houses museum exhibition.
The Museum of Wooden Architecture and Peasant Life was founded in 1960. It consists of the windmills, the church and several wooden houses, barns, bathhouses and other structures brought from different villages in Vladimir Region.
There were fifteen monasteries and convents in Suzdal some day, but only five of them have survived. The most interesting of them are – the Spaso-Yevfimieyev Monastery and the Convent of the Intercession. All the buildings of the Spaso-Yevfimieyev Monastery have been used for museum exhibitions. Here you can see the earliest Russian book issued in the mid-17th century, the most popular text-book for the study of Russian until the mid-18th century, the manuscript 17th century Gospel, clad in a lavish silver mount, the largest book in Russia. The Convent of the Intercession was widely known as a place of lifetime exiles for women of the aristocratic birth.