Suzdal

History

Administrative and municipal status

Tourism

Monuments

• The Kremlin is the oldest part of Suzdal, dating from the 10th century. It is a predecessor of the Moscow Kremlin. In the 12th century it was the base of prince Yury Dolgoruky, who ruled the vast northeastern part of Kyivan Rus and, among many other things, founded an outpost, which is now Moscow. A posad to the east became home to the secular population - shopkeepers and craftsmen, while the Kremlin proper was the home of the prince, the archbishop, and the high clergy. Within the Kremlin, the Archbishop’s Chambers houses the Suzdal History Exhibition, which includes a visit to the 18th-century Cross Hall, which was used for receptions. More exhibits are provided in the 1635 kremlin bell tower in the yard.
• The earth rampart of Kremlin encloses a number of houses and churches, including the Nativity of the Virgin Cathedral. This cathedral, with its blue domes spangled with gold, was constructed in 1222-1225 by Yury II on the site of an earlier church built around 1102 by Vladimir Monomakh. It was built of light tufa with limestones for details. In 1445 the cathedral collapsed and was rebuilt in 1528-1530 with the upper structure and drums being constructed of new brick. The original 13th-century door from the cathedral is now on exhibition in the Archbishop’s Chambers.
• Saviour Monastery of St Euthymius was founded in 1352 to the north of the town centre on the high bank of the Kamenka river. It was built under the order of the Suzdal-Nizhniy Novgorod prince Konstantin. The monastery was planned as a fortress and was originally enclosed by a wooden wall, later destroyed by the Poles. Today's reddish brick walls of the Suzdal monastery were erected over four years, from 1640 to 1644. The solid fortifications have 12 towers constructed according to the artillery power which appeared at that time. When the value of the monastery as a fortress was lost, a new application was found - it became a prison. Prisoners were most brutally punished there, and the place fell into disrepute. In 1905 the prison was abolished.
• Wooden Church of St. Nicholas. This church was built in Glotovo in 1766 and was moved to Suzdal in 1960 to be part of a Museum of Wooden Architecture & Peasant Life. The church is elevated off the ground about a story high from when it was moved across the country. This church is made out of all wood and represents the close relationship between wood and stone architecture and how precise the Russians were while building this back in 1766.
• St John the Baptist Church. This church was built in 1720, at the same time that the St. Nicholas church was built, although the difference between the types of architecture of the two churches is quite remarkable. Whereas the St. Nicholas Church is all wooden, the St. John Church is made out of white plastered walls with wooden supports.
• The St Alexander Convent. This church was built in 1240 by an unknown architect. It is said that the princesses of Suzdal, Mariya and Agrippina, were buried here in the 14th century.
• Intercession Convent. The convent was founded in 1364. In its center stands the cathedral of the Intercession; it was an add-on built in 1518 financed by Moscow knaz Basil The Third. The interior of the cathedral has no paintings or stained glass, it is simply plain white stone walls all around. The church was and still is one of the richest convents in Russia. The convent is the home of many nuns and is also the burial vault for twenty nuns of noble birth. Connected to the white stoned wall cathedral is an art museum which can be toured. There are many paintings but none in the cathedral itself. This building is filled with arches and art created in the 16th and 17th century.

Festivals

• Open Russian Festival of Animated Film is held in Suzdal in March annually since 2002, with the support of the Russian Ministry of Culture.
• Cucumber Day Festival with folk music performances is celebrated by locals on the second Saturday of July, every year since 2001.

  Infrastructure

• Nikolaevsky Posad
• Pushkarskaya Sloboda
• Heliopark
• GTK Suzdal

Film

• Andrei Rublev
• Bratya Karamazovy
• Finest, the brave Falcon
• The Shooting Party
• Tema
• Yunost Petra
• Charodei
• Dead Souls
• Peter the Great
• Tsar

Twin towns

• Rothenburg ob der Tauber, Germany, since 1988
• Cles, Italy, since 1991
• Oberlin, United States, since 1991
• Windham, United States, since 1992
• Évora, Portugal, since 2006
• Loches, France, since 2011
• Shangrao, China, since 2012

  Notable people

• Solomonia Saburova, the first wife of Grand prince Vasili III of Muscovy, canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church as St Sofia of Suzdal
• Dmitry Pozharsky, national hero, granted the unprecedented title Saviour of the Motherland for routing the Polish invasion
• Eudoxia Lopukhina, Tsarina, the first wife of Peter the Great, banished to the Intercession Convent of Suzdal
• Dmitry Vinogradov, chemist, the founder of the Imperial Porcelain Factory, Saint Petersburg
• Aleksei Gastev, revolutionary, trade-union activist and a pioneer of scientific management in Russia
• Sergei Shirokogorov, founder of Russian anthropology
• Vasily Blokhin, chief executioner of the NKVD during the Great Purge and World War II

  Citations

General sources

• Brumfield, William. Suzdal: Architectural Heritage in Photographs. Moscow: Tri Kvadrata..