russia: vladimir

When my cousin came to visit last year we went to a town called Suzdal for a weekend. To get to Suzdal we had to change modes of transport in Vladimir, which is also a popular town to visit. During that trip we didn't get to visit Vladimir, so Claire and I put it on the calendar for this year.

Vladimir is one of the so called Golden Ring towns, and is 200 kilometers east of Moscow. Almost 350,000 people call Vladimir home, though during our visit it didn't feel like that big of a city.

Vladimir is an old city, though there is a debate about when it was founded. For a long time 1108 was accepted as the year Vladimir was founded.

Then a few people said 'hey, Vladimir the Great came through the area in 990, so that should be the proper city foundation date.' From what I understand, most people think 1108 is the correct year, as other historical documents say that the city of Suzdal (founded in 1024,) looks down on Vladimir as being a young town. That being said, the city council of Vladimir passed a law in 2005 designating 990 as the founding year. To make a lomg story short, Vladimir is old.

During the 12^th and 13^th centuries Vladimir was the capital of what is now Russia, and this was the Golden Age of the city. As there was a lot of political power in the city, there were lots of churches too. (Religion and power still go together around the world, this has always been the case.)

Masons and architects from all over Europe worked on the churches in Vladimir.

It is easy to get to Vladimir, we took an early morning train on Saturday, arriving around 0830. It was only a 20 minute walk to the flat we'd booked, and I was excited to learn that the landlord spoke great English. I think he was excited to have foreigners rent his place, and get to practice English with native speakers.

The first place we noticed when we left the flat was the next door sports stadium. Even though it was pretty chilly, there was a guy running laps on the track. I took a couple photos where I pretended to be running, that's as athletic as I am these days.

We walked into the city center, or rather the historical city center. The next stop was a big stela in the middle of a platz, a war memorial. On another side of the platz was a big city sign, which is normally something I'd love. Sadly, there was a big tour bus parked in front of this one, there was no way to get even a halfway decent photo.

From there we headed toward the Church of the Annunciation, which is probably the most recognized church in the city. There is an entry fee, argh. Thankfully, there was no special entry fee for foreigners. It was rather dark inside, and rather cold. I wish there had been more light, because the painting all over was quite nice.

On the other side of the church was an overlook, allowing a view over quite a large city. Vladimir is mostly up on a bluff, so if you're in the right place there are some great landscape views. Near this overlook was a big memorial, we were lucky enough to get there just before a big Chinese tour group wandered through.

Heading back to the main street we found the Lenin statue, which was surprisingly small, or maybe just set to be the same size as the man himself was, quite small.

We kept going on the main street, getting all the way to the so called Golden Gate, which is actually painted white. It sits in the middle of a traffic circle, I think it's the last standing former gate to the city. 

(Like so many other Russian cities, Vladimir was a fortress of sorts, with city walls and gates and such.)

Inside this gate is a small, but really well done war museum. Good pictures, good information, well organized.

The second museum we visited falls into the 'quirky museum' category: the museum of spoons. There were two rooms of spoons, organized into different categories. They were mostly organized by country, with occasional smaller subsets, like the royal family of the United Kingdom. There was also a section with Olympic spoons, and one with cat spoons. Angela was happy to have her photo taken with a painted maple tree covered in Canadian spoons.

Not far from the spoon museum was another overlook, this one with a view over to the Church of the Annunxciation. Very pretty. 

By the time we saw this view it was getting dark, so we didn't stay long. There are a few benches scattered around, I bet it's a nice place to hang out in warmer weather.

We walked all the way back to the flat after dinner, which ended up being a longer walk than we expected, ooops. Oh well.

The next morning we packed up and gave the key back to the landlord. After stopping in a supermarket for breakfast to go and snacks, we found a nearby bus stop and waited.

It didn't take long for the bus we wanted to come by, it took us to the nearby small town of Bogolyubovo. The bus ride wasn't long, only 20 minutes of so. It wasn't the town itself we wanted to see, but rather a nearby church.

My phone showed me a path to walk to get to the church, so we started walking. Unfortunately, this path turned out to be the wrong way to go. We got to train tracks, and no way to cross. Argh. We turned back, went down the street a ways and tried another way, which ended up working out.

There is a long name for this church, but I don't think many people know it, and even fewer people use it: the Church of the Intercession of the Holy Virgin on the Nerl River. The few times I've heard of it, it has been referred to as the Church on the Nerl. It is built at the meeting point of two rivers, the Nerl and the Klyazma.

Wikipedia tells me the date of the building of this church is unknown, but they know the dates of some of the wall carvings, which is the 12^th century. 

So the church is from at least the 12^th century, and probably older.

We were there near the end of November, when the surrounding field was covered with a couple inches of snow, making everything beautiful. There is a pond just 'under' the church, which was frozen when we visited, it was a perfect place to take a team photo.

The church itself isn't big, and honestly not all that interesting. We came to see the outside basically only because of where it is located, not for any historical or educational reasons.

It didn't take us long to take all the photos we wanted to take, then we went back the same way we came. It was easy to find the bus stop on the other side of the road, and again we didn't have to wait long for a bus to come along and take us back to Vladimir.

There was another museum in Vladimir that we'd wanted to see, something with jewels I think. It was located in an old church, so the setting was supposed to be quite nice. Unfortunately, when we got to the front door, it was locked and the whole thing was closed. How is a museum closed on a Sunday? Argh. From there we walked to yet another church, a Catholic church. Go figure, as we got there we realized a service was taking place, so we didn't feel comfortable taking more than a couple steps inside the doors.

At that point we felt as if we'd seen everything we could, so we went to a cafe for dinner, then to another cafe to hang out for another hour. It was an easy walk back to the train station, then home to Moscow.

I can see myself going back to Vladimir, but definitely in a different time of year.