St
Petersburg - Moscow Cruise
On the Volga-Baltic Waterways
River Cruise Ships The ship in which we cruised is the nearest one and was called the Novikov Priboy. It holds about 200 passengers. |
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Svir River Our cruise took us down the Volga-Baltic waterway. Hydro-electric plants were situated at most of the many locks. |
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Kizhi This church was built entirely of wood (no nails) in 1714 on the island of Kizhi. It is such a masterpiece that the government not only did not destroy it, they made an open-air museum around it of other wooden buildings taken from the surrounding area. The 22 cupolas are covered with aspen-wood shingles, which have turned a shimmering silver. |
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Kizhi In the same enclosure is the winter church built in 1764 (here in the front) and a separate bell town from 1874 (with the pointed steeple which was not allowed directly on churches). The large churches were too hard to heat, so smaller ones were often built for winter use. |
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Kizhi This 1876 house belonged to a wealthy peasant family. The arched opening with ramp is to the adjoining barn, where the livestock were kept from September to May. |
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Vytegra Canal Village of Ankhimovo at sunset |
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Sheksna River This area was flooded by a hydro-electric project. The 19th Century church of Krokhino was drowned, along with many villages. |
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Volga River At Tutaev is the Church of the Exaltation of the Cross. |
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Yaroslavl 50 churches were built in this city in the 1600's alone. The interior of the Church of St Elijah the Prophet is covered with frescoes from 1680. |
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Yaroslavl The iconostasis (wall of icons hiding the altar) from the Church of St Elijah the Prophet is from 1696. |
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Yaroslavl This icon is visible in the photo above in the right bottom. Russian orthodox iconography was very strict as to the forms used, so the style and content is virtually unchanged from Byzantine times. |
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Uglich In the city of Uglich we heard singers in the Transfiguration Cathedral of 1713. They stand before the iconostasis. This building was converted to a museum during the communist regime and has not yet been restored to the Church. |