Old Russia. "A look into the past

On September 4, 2015, an exhibition was opened at the Starorussky branch of the Novgorod Museum-Reserve "A look into the past. The thousand-year history of Staraya Russa in archaeological finds". I was busy in Novgorod that day, but thanks Anton Kamensky, who kindly shared the photographs, I can present a photo report from the opening.

At the exhibition you can see not only finds from the 2015 field season, but also objects from archaeological collections from different years, incl. stored in the funds of the Novgorod Museum-Reserve and its Old Russian branch and not presented in permanent exhibitions.

The opening began with greetings and a lecture with slides about the finds and discoveries of this season.

The exhibition exposition consists of seven main sections. First - "History of the archaeological study of Staraya Russa". It is dedicated to archaeological research and archaeologists who contributed to the study of the cultural layer of Staraya Russa.

Next - "Russa to Russa". This part of the exhibition is dedicated to the late Neolithic and early metal era (III-II millennium BC). The remains of a settlement from this period were discovered in the lower part of the cultural strata of the Pyatnitsky-I excavation site in 2012.

Most of the exhibition is dedicated to medieval Ruse. These are the sections "The Making of a City"(tells about the oldest stage of the city’s life at the turn of the 10th – 11th and 11th centuries) and "The Middle Ages - an era of prosperity"(talks about the daily life of the Rushans in the medieval period).

Here you can see a wide variety of finds, reflecting the most diverse aspects of the life of medieval townspeople.

Finds from the early layers -

Leather shoes -

Various household items -

Whistles and brunchers -

Jewelry -

Board for playing "Mill" -

Toys: balls, balls, dice, etc. -

Fabric collection -

Separately presented is a selection of interesting birch bark letters from Staraya Russa and a collection of hanging lead seals.

Part of the exhibition - “Time of Troubles”, tells about the 16th – 17th centuries. in the history of Staraya Russa and the material culture of this time.

"Resort City"- this is the name of the part of the exhibition dedicated to the daily life of Rushan people in the 18th – 19th centuries.

The exhibition ends with a section “Staraya Russa during the Great Patriotic War through the eyes of archaeologists”, which reflects some moments of life during this difficult time.

The exhibition will be available to visitors during September – October 2015. We invite everyone.

The name of this city already smells of antiquity. Associations with it arise quite naturally - Rus', Russians... Even the adjective from the name of the city is “Old Russian”; such a funny situation, from a philological point of view: when you say “Old Russian”, you can mean both Rus' and a separate Russian city. Staraya Russa, according to a number of assumptions, is almost the same age as Veliky Novgorod; excavations directly indicate that the city already existed and lived a full life in the 12th century. And in general, Staraya Russa seemed to me like a “reduced Novgorod”; now it is a small city with a population of 30 thousand people (in better times it was 40 thousand), but after the Hill even it seems huge. The first time I looked a little at this city in the evening from the window of the bus on the way to Kholm, and the next day I left Kholm back and arrived in Staraya Russa by mid-afternoon.

2. The bus station in Staraya Russa is located, like the railway station, at the northern exit from the city, that is, from Novgorod. Therefore, I did not get to it and got off in the city center, at the intersection of Mineralnaya and Karl Marx streets. This place is dominated by Soviet buildings.

3. School No. 1. I couldn’t immediately identify the gun visible in the frame, but it looks like a 1930 model 37-mm anti-tank gun.

5. Mineralnaya is one of the main streets of the city. From where I got off the bus, I walked along this street in a northerly direction. Khrushchev buildings in Staraya Russa are also painted in light colors, which emphasizes the similarity of the city with Novgorod.

6. Crossroads with Volodarsky Street. The building of the cultural center looks like it was built in the 1930s.

8. Opposite the Rusich Central Committee there is a museum of the Northwestern Front and the Partisan Region. I visited this museum, and there will be a separate post about it.

9. Next to the museum there is a small exhibition of military equipment from the Great Patriotic War. Particularly noteworthy is the T-26 tank, which is extremely rare on monuments.

10. Here, at the intersection of Mineralnaya and Volodarsky, there is a kind of “Finnish trace” in Staraya Russa - a monument to the soldiers of the 86th Vilmanstrand Infantry Regiment, who were stationed in Staraya Russa, who died in the Russian-Japanese War of 1904-1905. Vilmanstrand is now the Finnish city of Lappeenranta.

12. Having passed the plant, I turned left and came out to the ensemble of the former Spaso-Preobrazhensky Monastery:

13. The former monastery now houses a local history museum. This is one of the most ancient buildings of Staraya Russa, not inferior to many buildings in Novgorod. The monastery was founded in 1192, rebuilt several times, and its oldest surviving building is the Transfiguration Cathedral (1432).

15. But the Church of the Nativity of Christ standing next door is a later construction. First half of the 17th century.

16. The wooden porch is, of course, already a reconstruction. But convincing.

17. Still, many people think that, as a St. Petersburg resident, there is very little architecture that can surprise me. But this is not so - my eye is unaccustomed to ancient Russian architecture.

18. This is one of the former monastery buildings (and now, it seems, a residential building), built in the 19th century, and therefore does not fit in with the general ensemble of buildings.

19. On one of the neighboring houses I saw this Soviet sign. In the summer I saw the same ones in Krasnoyarsk.

20. From the monastery I again returned to Volodarsky Street, along which I walked to the bank of the Polist River.

21. And here she is. A quiet river in the rays of the low November sun.

22. The deck of the bridge over Polist is, oddly enough, wooden.

23. From this bridge there is a very picturesque view of the Resurrection Cathedral. The same angle appears in the title frame, but here I decided to show it with zoom. The cathedral stands on the spit at the confluence of the Porusya River with the Polist.

25. In the northwestern part of the city, across the river, there is St. Petersburg Street and a fairly complete pre-revolutionary building. During the era of the Russian Empire, Staraya Russa was a district town of the Novgorod province.

26. Stalin's cinema building. In the background you can see Polist and the Resurrection Cathedral in the distance.

I will explore the rest of the city beyond the river the next morning, on the way to the bus station. In the meantime, I’m returning to the right bank of the Polisti.

27. District development. During the war, Staraya Russa did not suffer as much as it could have, if we compare it with the scale of the fighting that took place here.

28. And the post-war Stalin buildings are integrated into the appearance of the city so well that at first glance, sometimes you can’t tell them apart from the old buildings.

30. Revolution Square with an almost entirely preserved architectural ensemble of the county town. Even the old water pump remains.

32. Marx Street, leaving Revolution Square. The shot shows an old fire station with a watchtower and a red brick building that now houses a polytechnic college. I suspect that it was originally a district school.

33. This same building from the other side (the sky is cloudy because the photo was taken on a different day in the morning):

Porusya (by the way, presumably this name has the same root as the name of the city) is a swamp river, and therefore its water is brown in color. It begins in the huge Rdeysk swamp, already mentioned in the post about the Hill. However, Polist also originates there (the swamp system is called Rdeisko- Polistovskaya).

36. Along the Cathedral Bridge across Porussia, I went to the Resurrection Cathedral, which I had already seen from the Living Bridge across Polist. The cathedral was built in 1692-1696, although in subsequent years it was periodically reconstructed. For example, the bell tower is clearly of a much later date.

37. Then I returned from Strelka to the right bank of Porusya and continued moving south along the coast, along the Dostoevsky embankment, muddy in the autumn mud, towards the writer’s house-museum.

38. In the foreground is the building of the district noble assembly built in the 19th century (and now the scientific and cultural center of the Dostoevsky Museum), and a little further is the Old Russian military registration and enlistment office; by the way, it’s common to as many as five districts - in addition to Starorussky, also Volotovsky, Parfinsky, Poddorsky and Kholmsky (the military registration and enlistment office in Kholm was closed).

39. A little further south, that is, upstream, in Porussia there are the remains of another dam:

40. Autumn evening in Porussia and the bell tower of the Resurrection Cathedral:

41. The old pavement has been preserved on the embankment. And in general, the atmosphere here is somehow special. It seems that little has changed here since the time of Skotoprigonyevsk from Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov...

42. And here is the Dostoevsky house-museum, which looks quite simple and discreet, but is therefore pleasing to the eye. The writer lived here for six years - from 1872 to 1878, and it was during this time that “The Brothers Karamazov” (as already mentioned, Staraya Russa served as the prototype for the district town of Skotoprigonyevsk) and “Demons” were written.

I didn’t go to the museum itself, since the plans included a military museum, and from this place I walked back in a northern direction, but along a different street.

44. These places are mainly built up with wooden houses:

45. Nearby stands the red brick church of the Great Martyr Mina, built in the 14th century in a typical Novgorod style, which is as simple as it is beautiful. Not so long ago, this valuable architectural monument stood virtually abandoned, but in the 2000s it was transferred to the Church, and restoration is now underway.

46. School number two - a building that looks like it was built before the war:

47. Church of St. George the Victorious, built in 1410. The porch, I suspect, is much later.

48. From St. George’s Church, through some slum alley, I came out onto the parallel street of Red Commanders, on which another ancient Orthodox church attracts attention - the Church of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker of 1371 (bell tower of the 18th century) - apparently the oldest surviving building in the city.

49. And nearby is the thoughtful Fyodor Mikhailovich:

50. And this street has a very non-trivial name - Svarog Street. Naturally, thanks to the ancient history of the city, the already emerging association with Slavic pagan mythology is strengthened even more. Only later does one become disappointed when one finds out that this is only the name of a local artist. Although why "only"? The artist was lucky to have a last name, and in such a city...

From Svarog Street I went out again to Mineralnaya. Thus, completing the circular route, I gradually return to the same place where I got off the bus during the day.

51. The Staraya Russa resort is one of the symbols of the city. Over the course of several centuries, the city developed thanks to the salt industry, and at the beginning of the 19th century the medicinal properties of local mineral waters containing salts were discovered, and in 1828 a resort was opened, which is still in operation today.

52. Mineralnaya Street:

53. An original way to combat unauthorized posting of advertisements is to put posters behind bars. And rightly so, otherwise they would have covered Dostoevsky’s face with pieces of paper...

54. Victory Park next to the resort. In the center is the Monument of Glory with an eternal flame.

55. Khrushchev buildings and the Polist hotel, where I spent the night:

56. Nearby there is the Holy Trinity Church. It was originally built in 1676, in the middle of the 19th century it became very dilapidated, after which it was restored by the architect K. A. Ton (the same one who built the Cathedral of Christ the Savior).

57. View of Engels Street towards the bank of Polisti. This photo (like the subsequent ones) was taken the next morning, when the weather was cloudy, and I was walking from the hotel to the bus station.

58. We need to know what the name of the store is. Some of the Siberians made their mark in Staraya Russa.

60. View from the Living Bridge across Polist to the Strelka and the Resurrection Cathedral. It looks better in sunny weather :)

61. St. Petersburgskaya Street behind Polistu. I followed it towards the northern exit from the city.

62. Red stars seem to be from Soviet times:

63. Soviet architecture:

65. So I finally came to the crossing over the railway tracks. This is the western neck of the Staraya Russa station.

66. The railway station in Staraya Russa was opened in 1897 as part of the Bologoe-Pskov railway. The current station building is Stalinist (the old one was destroyed during the war), the chapel next door is a new build. And the railway traffic here is extremely weak. There is a fast train from Moscow to Pskov every night, and a commuter train runs to Edrovo station (not far from Valdai) twice a week.

I took a photo of the station while standing at the bus station waiting for the bus that took me to Shimsk, that is, towards Veliky Novgorod. But more on that later.

Staraya Russa, one of the oldest cities in Russia, became the main goal of our recent trip to the Novgorod region. I've been here before - and also in winter. Unfortunately, that trip took place in the “pre-digital” era, so if there was anything about it in my LJ, it was little and uninformative. Now we came here by car and quite systematically toured almost all the main attractions.
Staraya Russa has been known since 1167; salt has always been mined here, and the city paid very decent taxes from these industries to the treasury - first of the Novgorod Republic, then of the Moscow Kingdom. Now the salt factory of the 1770s, of course, is not in operation, although it has been partially preserved - we, unfortunately, did not get to it, it is better to go there in the summer.
One of the oldest surviving buildings in Russa is the Spassky Cathedral of the Transfiguration Monastery, which now houses an exhibition of the local history museum. Thus, you can not only get acquainted with the exhibits (quite interesting, I must say), but also visit inside the temple of the 12th-17th centuries. From the 12th century, however, only the foundations remain, the main volume belongs to the 15th century (from this time there are also fresco fragments inside - very indistinct, however), and the completion is already from the 17th century (there are also frescoes from the 17th century here). Nearby there are a couple more interesting buildings - a hexagonal bell tower and the Church of the Nativity of Christ from the 1630s with a refectory. There is an art gallery in the church with works by local artists, but to save time we did not go there.
Nearby on Krestetskaya Street there is another monument - the recently restored Church of the Life-Giving Trinity. It is based in the 17th century, but in the 19th century it was extensively rebuilt according to the design of the controversial architect Ton; from the same time, fragments of paintings inside the temple have been preserved.

Spaso-Preobrazhensky Monastery. Spassky Cathedral (1198, rebuilt in 1442), bell tower (XVII century), Church of the Nativity (1630s), Church of the Presentation of the Lord (1630s).

And from another angle: Spassky Cathedral (1198, rebuilt in 1442) and the bell tower (XVII century). A fragment of 15th century masonry has been uncovered.

This church houses exhibitions of the local history museum, which contains artifacts from excavations on the territory of Siara Russa. Here are some of them:

Spoons of the 12th century and fabrics of the 12th-14th centuries.

Leather shoes XII-XIV centuries.

Cornices of a residential building from the 11th century.

Fragments of a salt pipeline from the 12th to 14th centuries.

Counting tags of the 11th-14th centuries were used for counting, possibly recording some debts, mutual settlements, etc.

Wooden decorations from the 14th century

Well, and birch bark letters - where would we be without them in the Novgorod region.

The frescoes inside are poorly preserved. The 17th century is still here and there, but only small fragments remain from the 15th century.

And here are fragments of 19th century paintings.

Trinity Church (1684), rebuilt in the 19th century according to the design of the architect Ton.

There are 19th century paintings inside the church.

From here it’s a stone’s throw to the central Cathedral Square, where there is no cathedral, but you can see a red-brick water tower built in 1908-1909, several buildings of the 19th century (Real School, a women’s gymnasium, the former Belgrade Hotel, etc.), and also walk along the pedestrian Voskresenskaya street leading to the bridge. Near the bridge stands the oldest civil building in Russa - the Popov House, built early. XVIII century (in my opinion, the building is still residential!). The embankment of the Polist River is probably good in the summer; in winter it is only suitable for viewing from the opposite bank of the Resurrection Cathedral, built in 1692-1696. The cathedral was recently restored and painted very brightly; the interiors did not seem to have been preserved, so we limited ourselves to the view from the opposite bank.

Fire station (1887) and Alekseevskoe real school (late 19th - early 20th centuries).

House N.P. Belyaev - mansion early. XIX century

Cathedral Square. Women's gymnasium (19th century) and water tower (1908-1909).

Historical development of Voskresenskaya Street.

House of I.I. Popova (beginning of the 18th century) is the oldest civil building in Staraya Russa.

Resurrection Cathedral (1692-1696) at the confluence of the frozen rivers Polist and Porusya.

Some approximation of the Resurrection Cathedral.

Next we headed to Georgievskaya Street, where one of the most interesting monuments of the city is located - St. George's Cathedral of the 15th century, rebuilt in the 18th century. It seems that this temple was not closed during Soviet times, because there you can still see a gilded baroque iconostasis of the 19th century and even older icons, as well as paintings from the beginning. XX century At the end of the street there is another ancient temple (the most authentic, despite the recently erected dome) - the Church of St. Mines. And two steps away from it, in the house that the Dostoevsky family acquired in 1876, a museum of the writer was opened. I visited the museum on my last visit to Russa, not that it was uninteresting, but now, to save time, we didn’t go there.
Staraya Russa is generally closely connected with what is, in my opinion, the best work of Dostoevsky, “The Brothers Karamazov” - by all accounts, this is the city of Skotoprigonyevsk depicted in the novel. On the opposite bank of the river there is the so-called. “Grushenka’s house”, and in the building of the Belgrade Hotel in the tavern located there, Ivan Karamazov delivered his speech about the Grand Inquisitor.
However, the ancient churches here are no less (and most likely, more) interesting: in addition to those shown earlier, there is another ancient temple here - the Church of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker, built in 1391. It was also restored, but this time we were not able to get inside.

St. George's Cathedral of the 15th century (rebuilt in the 18th century).

Gergievsky Cathedral from the apse.

At the foundation, masonry from the 15th century is exposed (it’s a waste of time to plaster these old churches!).

Iconostasis of the Gergiev Church (XVIII-XIX centuries) and its fragment.

Royal Doors of the 19th century.

House of A.K. Gribbe (mid-19th century) was acquired by the Dostoevsky family in the 1870s. Now there is a writer's museum, which we did not go to this time. There are many places connected with Dostoevsky in Russe, but due to lack of time they did not come to our attention.

The most authentic ancient church of St. Great Martyr Mina was built of shell rock and Ilmen limestone (beginning of the 15th century, restored after the Swedish devastation in the 1650s). All the churches in the city at that time were the same, but they are all now plastered. I hope that in view of the restoration that has begun, the church of Mina will not suffer the same fate.

Like, for example, this temple - St. Nicholas the Wonderworker (1371, perestroika and bell tower 1710).

From this side the church seems more like the 14th century, but the 17th century still prevails.

Finally, we went to the Staraya Russa resort, founded in the beginning. XVIII century (we remember that the city has long been famous for its salt and mineral springs) and experienced its heyday in late. XIX - early XX centuries However, the resort is quite alive and well these days - there are a lot of buildings for accommodating patients, a drinking gallery, a mud bath - unfortunately, the old wooden buildings of the 19th century did not survive the upheavals of the 20th century - and all this is mainly post-war. The territory is publicly accessible to everyone - for a small fee of 50 rubles per person you can go through the checkpoint, drink and take water from the springs in the drinking gallery, admire the self-flowing mineral Muravyovsky fountain (which has been flowing here continuously since the mid-19th century), and feed the ducks , gather in abundance around the non-freezing mineral Lower Pond, from where they draw brown mud for the nearby mud bath.
Near the resort you can visit the reconstruction of the estate of a medieval Rushanin (I can’t judge the quality of the exhibition; we didn’t go here), and also see the Pyatnitsky excavation with the remains of pavements and foundations of buildings of the 11th-12th centuries, but you can see them only in the summer, since in winter Everything there is covered with snow.

The symbol of the Sraraya Russa resort is the Muravyovsky fountain. This is one of the most powerful self-flowing mineral fountains in Europe. The well, drilled in 1859, is still in operation! Previously there was a beautiful tent above it, but it has not survived. However, the fountain is already beautiful at any time of the year.

Unfortunately, no other historical buildings (most of which were wooden) have survived on the resort territory.

The central entrance to the resort.

Drinking gallery where you can drink water and take it with you.

Sulphide-silt brown mud is drawn from this ice-free mineral lake.

for a nearby mud bath.

The ice-free pond is a great place for ducks, which are also fed here by holidaymakers.

V.F. began her career at the resort theater of Staraya Russa in 1895. Komissarzhevskaya. The current theater building looks like this.

The Pyatnitsky excavation site is probably very interesting, but you can only be convinced of this in the summer, when the snow melts :)

Near the resort there is a restored manor of a medieval Rushan with several museum exhibitions. We didn’t go inside, so I can’t say how spreading a cranberry it is.

This was where the walk around Staraya Russa had to end, since that day we still had a long way to go to the city of Porkhov, where we really wanted to get there before dark.