Rostov the Great: Around the Town Center

7 points6 km6 hours

Rostov the Great is more than a thousand years old. Today it's a small town, but it was once a spiritual center of the country and a major trading post. Visit the local kremlin, which was never a fortress, and stroll down an old street lined with merchant buildings. Make the rounds of the local museums and find out how two famous heroes of Russian epic tales are connected with this place.

Route author

Susanin Team

Things to do

📜 Learn the city's history
🌆🌿 Soak up the atmosphere

Route points (7)

Worship Cross in Rostov Veliky

Point on route “Rostov the Great: Around the Town Center”

Point 7

Worship Cross

🗿 Monument

The Baptism of Rostov

The first governor of Rostov on behalf of the Kievan prince was Yaroslav the Wise. It was most likely under him that the people of Rostov were baptized, en masse and right in the lake. According to church tradition, it went like this: the men stood on one side, the women on the other, and the priests moved between them on rafts, sprinkling them with holy water. It's also worth noting that the pagans were converted to Christianity with the help of none other than Dobrynya Nikitich, uncle of Prince Vladimir, Yaroslav the Wise's father. At the same time a wooden Dormition Cathedral was built in Rostov. As often happens, the wooden building burned down, and in 1160 a stone one was built in its place. The present cathedral, rebuilt on the same site in the late 15th and early 16th centuries, is part of the Kremlin ensemble. Another great epic hero, Alyosha Popovich, spent his childhood near this cathedral.

The Worship Cross

To commemorate Rostov as a key spiritual center and one of the first places in Rus to accept the Christian faith, a worship cross was erected on June 5, 2015. The date was not chosen by chance: 2015 marked exactly a thousand years since the death of Prince Vladimir, the Baptizer of Rus, and June 5 is the feast of the Synaxis of All Saints of the Rostov-Yaroslavl Land.