Kostroma: Bitter taste of history

"My Planet" invites readers to cruise along the Volga. The first stop was in the Myshkin, now we swim to Kostroma, where there were once irrevocable past past, charm of the XIX century, personal tragedies and the current Volga under.

Second Stop – Kostroma.

In a straight line from Myshkina to Kostroma about 150 km. In the highway inscribed in the landscape – 226 km, you can get in three hours. On the river – as many as 13 hours, and all because the Volga makes two big loops. One goes up, north, to the lights of industrial Rybinsk with a short occasion in the Rybinsk reservoir, sizes and waves similar to the real sea. The second slides south, past the night Yaroslavl, the parking lot in which will be on the way back, and then turns to the east.

And the Kostroma – high, drowning in the serenoons. From the river to the central square rises the street called Milk Mountain. In essence, this is a mountain, in the upper part of which trading rows, built at the beginning of the XIX century begin. This, of course, is not the St. Petersburg seating courtyard, but the idea is the same: galleries, arched vaults, spacious indoor rooms. Kostroma trading rows occupy two quarters. Under the facilities and names of the streets – Red rows, flour rows, tobacco rows.

At the very top – a huge Susaninskaya Square, surrounded by buildings in the style of Russian classicism: Fire Calancha, former Gaptweakhta, the building of the present places, Borschov’s mansion and a little further – the noble assembly. And of course, a monument to Ivan Susanin near shopping rows.

This architectural ensemble is considered the historical center of the city, which causes a slight perplexity: how so? And where is the truly old town, where traces of history, leaving, if you believe the chronicles, at the very beginning of the XIII century?

Alas, almost nothing left from a rapid history – he collapsed from dilapidation, it became a victim of fires, it was purposefully destroyed. And it began in the same XIII century – the first mention of Kostroma is connected with the burning of the city during the punitive campaign on the Kostroma of the Son of Vsevolod a big nest, Prince Constantine. In the chronicles, it is said: "Just Just, and the people of Issymash".

But during the Mongol-Tatar invasion of Kostroma almost did not suffer. How and why, it is not exactly known: whether it was bought off, whether they did not reach her, or could not take it and had to negotiate. It is not excluded that this is why not somewhere, and in Kostroma Dmitry Donskaya ran away from the troops of Khan Tokhtamyshe in 1382, and his son Vasily – from the troops of one in 1408.

But in 1416, the fortress burned, the new Kremlin was built elsewhere, east and closer to the river. At first it was one fortress, then at the initiative of the landing people attached another one.

After 300 years, at the time of Catherine II, immediately after Kostroma received the status of the provincial city, the fire destroyed most of the old wooden buildings. In 1781, the master plan for redevelopment was approved, which determines the modern person of the central part of the city – the rise from the pier, the fan of streets divergent from the river. And on the site of the Kremlin and the Old Town, behind the trading orders, broke the park.

At the same time in Kostroma, a light industry begins to develop a light industry in the fire of merchants and artisans. By the middle of the XIX century on the western outskirts adjacent to the Kostroma River, factories appear, mainly textile, next to them – working villages, and in the city center – new stone houses of industrialists and merchants.

It is surprising that in the city with such a long history there are not a lot of churches, but those that have survived, do not look like each other and very beautiful. For example, the Church of the Resurrection on Debra, the only persons preserved in Kostroma, the landing temple of the XVII century, decorated with irrigated tires and stone thread. His apcides are painted by a diamond rust, partially restored frescoes of 1650-1652, and one of the adhesives decorates ancient Pyatius iconostasis with the finest wooden carvings and ancient icons.

All architectural monuments of Kostroma – from the temples and old wooden houses with a thread characteristic of the Russian North, to the merchant baroque and Russian modernist of the late XIX century – scattered around the city and are not perceived as something whole. In principle, this is typical of large developing cities, but in Kostroma – with the exception of the Ensemble of Susaninskaya Square – historical artifacts often look unadighted, and their location is in no way beaten.

One of the few places where the smell of history is diligently, is the Ipatiev Monastery, located on the arrow between the Volga and the Kostroma River in it. He stands apart from the city, behind the river, and all the construction of him – from the Trinity Cathedral and the fortress walls to the monastic cells – they look like and today they are ready to slam the gate and withstand the siege.

For the first time, the Ipatiev Monastery is mentioned in the chronicles in 1432 as a long time acting, that is, it was founded much earlier. It is also known that since the beginning of the XVI century, the monastery patronized the genus Godnovy and personally King Boris, which a lot contributed to the prosperity of a quiet abode. It is also known that shortly before death in the Ipatiev Monastery was hidden Lhadmitriy II.

The main event that the monastery in the history of Russia was calling for the kingdom of Mikhail Romanov. The guest house with a high porch, in front of which in the February Frost of 1613, a great embassy arrived from Moscow for six hours, persuaded the 13-year-old Mikhail to take the throne, was later reworked for the chamber of Romanov. Now there is a museum, interesting first of all, the interior and things that preserved from the times of the Great Embassy.

Next to the monastery – the Museum of Ancient Architecture, in which the churches and other vintage buildings from all over the field of. And right there, on the other hand, the monastery wall – trading ranks where you can buy products of local textile factories.

Like any big city, the Kostroma multi-layer and extremely ambiguous. This is a living city, but there is an obsessive feeling of some kind of disharmony and deceived expectations. As if you do not show something the most important. And if you ask, it turns out that this impression is quite reasonable.

The city, the deep location of which turned it into a place where it is possible to hide from dangers, not coast in its cultural artifacts. Something was destroyed by time, something burned out, they demolished something, because it was mixed by the "new life".

That is how many temples were destroyed during the Soviet power. From the constellation of the monasteries, which the city was famous for, only Ipatiev, Znamensky and Eanish-Anastasinsky with the Cathedral of the time of Ivan the Terrible, but also in it, part of the old frescoes destroyed the 1982 fire. The main exhibit of the Wooden Architecture Museum – the church from the village of Spas-Fairy, built in 1713, burned out in 2002. In the church of John the Theologian on a hanging mountain, built in 1686, there is still planetarium.

All this can not be known, but the feeling that everything in this city is nature, history and modern life – there is no way separately, still not going anywhere. It seems that it prevents this difficult thing to feel this difficult, but very lively city, so it remains to relax and leisurely walk along it, stopping, peering and listening. Slowly climb from the pier to the central square, go on the streets, go to the embankment, breathe the river and space, and for goodbye, Cherry on a cake, go to the Ostrovsky gazebo, from which, according to legend, looked at the marina.

Paradoxically, it is in this arbor, built over the Volga on the remnants of the XV century the twentieth century, came together, there was a permanently gone past, charm of the XIX century, personal tragedies and the current Volga under all this.