Old kremlin town
Loading Map
Novgorod,
Russia
Friday, September 14, 2007
Befuddled again by the weather, I woke up to perfectly clear blue skies, only to find everything had gone totally overcast after stepping out of the shower. Four days into my trip across Russia and I have yet to have a nice sunny day. What gives?
The usual route into the country tends to involve a few days in St. Petersburg followed by an overnight train to Moscow. I decided I'd change things up a bit and stop off someplace else en route. Despite its name, Novgorod ("New Town") is one of the oldest cities in Russia and has long been a much revered center of Russian history and culture. Its apparently a pretty big stop for domestic tourists, but many foreigners tend to give it a miss. With the city lying on a more minor rail line and off the main St. Petersburg - Moscow road, its perhaps understandable. I, however, managed to figure out the rail times between the two, giving me the opportunity to come down yesterday evening, stay the night and spend all of today looking around.
Novgorod got pretty thoroughly bashed up by the Nazis in World War II, in their usual respect for all things Slavic. Surprisingly, the Soviets did a pretty good job piecing the kremlin and most of the town's historic churches and monasteries together, rather than starting anew. The rest of the city, though, is nothing to write home about. Bland Soviet construction and drab pseudo-classical facades predominate even throughout the old center (and forget about the suburbs). There's a wee bit of historic architecture (non-religious, that is) on the east bank of the river beyond Yaroslav's Court, along with a number of quaint wooden houses in the backstreets. But it's really not the urban environment itself that you come here for.
The big sight in town is undoubtedly the kremlin, which looks remarkably original and well-maintained for a 14th-century structure that took a major battering just over 60 years ago. Nevermind the austere government building and Lenin statue out front of it . . . this is a fine specimen of medieval Russian architecture. Sadly, the interior of it was mostly a series of scaffold-covered buildings in varied states of visibility. Certainly nothing was as obscured as several places in Iasi and Curtea de Arges in Romania were, but the mess of wooden planks and tacky netting on the borders of St. Sophia's Cathedral and belfry plus numerous other buildings kind of made it difficult to appreciate the full structures. At least the local government was apologetic about it - there were plaques all over the place showing regret for the inconvenience, but that the restoration was necessary for the upcoming 1150th anniversary celebration. Fair enough then.
Across the Volkhov river sits the secondary principal sight of Yaroslav's Court, which is mostly an ensemble of early Novgorod ecclesiastical architecture. Some of the churches here are really quite striking (even if a couple are under scaffolding as well). I may not have had the best weather to enjoy the place in - 11°C and grey - but at least the primarily white facades were uplifting enough. The entry fees were considerably less steep than in St. Petersburg, thankfully. Even still, for the two I actually paid to visit, the heavily faded and very fragmentary frescoes inside didn't really justify the R60 and R90 admission. I'm beginning to think that being overcharged is part and parcel of travel across Russia.
It's been mostly a day of churches and monasteries then, in a city that's basically a moderate-sized provincial town in between the big guns of Russia. Tonight I have a night train to Moscow, which arrives at a blisteringly early 5:30am. It will be interesting to compare and contrast Russia's gigantic, ritzy capital with the grand classicism of St. Petersburg.
