Location: Vladimir Oblast Map
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Gorokhovets (Гороховец) is a small medieval Russian town in Vladimir Oblast in Russia. It is famous for its religious architecture of monasteries and beautiful traditional churches. Gorokhovets is added to the list of most important traditional cities known as the Golden Ring of Russia.
Gorokhovets is located in the Volga-Oka interfluve, on the right
bank of the Klyazma river, 157 km east of Vladimir near the border
with the Nizhny Novgorod region. One of the oldest cities in the
Vladimir region, since 1970 included in the list of historical
settlements of Russia, many monuments of church and civil
architecture from different eras have been preserved in the city and
its environs.
The M-7 “Volga” highway passes through the
city, the railway station Gorokhovets (Velikovo village) is located
12 km away.
Troicko- Nikolsky Monastery (Троицко-Никольский монастырь)
Sretensky Monastery (Сретенский монастырь)
Znamensky Krasnogrivsky Monastery (Знаменский Красногривский монастырь)
Annunciation Cathedral (Благовещенский собор)
In the 6th century, on the site of the future city,
presumably, there was a Finno-Ugric settlement, and in the 10th-11th
centuries - a Slavic one, which turned into a small fortress in the 3rd
quarter of the 12th century. Probably, the fortified border point on the
eastern borders of the Vladimir-Suzdal principality was founded by Grand
Duke Andrei Bogolyubsky in 1168 during the campaigns of Russian troops
against the Volga Bulgaria. The original core of the city was a citadel,
located on Nikolskaya Gora - a steep cape on the right bank of the
Klyazma, the height of its earthen ramparts reached 5 m. After the
advent of the citadel, a lower settlement arose at the foot of the
mountain. The 12th-century burial ground on Puzhalova Gora combines
pagan and Christian traditions.
For the first time, Gorokhovets
as the “city of the Holy Mother of God” is mentioned in the Laurentian
Chronicle, dated 1239, when the Tatar-Mongols burned it for the first
time, after which life in the city froze for a long time.
At the end of the XIV - beginning of the XV century,
under Prince Vasily I, Gorokhovets became part of the Moscow
principality. At that time, the southeastern boundary line of Rus' ran
along the Oka River and was called the “Belt of the Most Holy
Theotokos”. The natural continuation of this belt was the “city of the
Holy Mother of God Gorokhovets”, which covered the border from the east.
At the same time, Gorokhovets became the center of the
Christianization of the surrounding lands, in 1352, not far from the
city, the monastery of Vasily of Caesarea (the modern village of
Myachkovo) arose from the Suzdal Spaso-Efimiev Monastery, and in 1365,
not far from the mouth of the Lukh River, the deserts of St. George from
the Trinity-Sergius Monastery (modern Skit Egoriy).
At the
beginning of the 15th century, Gorokhovets became the center of the
volost of the Nizhny Novgorod district, there was a washing yard and the
"volostels" lived - the grand-ducal rulers (from 1500 Terenty and Stepan
Ostrogins, from 1508 the boyar Prokofy Matveyevich Apraksin).
In
1539, the volost survived the raid of the Kazan Tatars and was
devastated, and the city was destroyed, but quickly restored, a new
attack in 1545 was repulsed. According to the legend of this period,
when the enemies were besieging Gorokhovets, an image of a huge warrior
with a sword in his hands appeared over the mountain in the rays of the
setting sun. The enemies retreated in panic, and the place has since
been called Puzhalova Gora.
In 1563, Ivan the Terrible gave
Gorokhovets to his brother-in-law, the Kabardian prince Mikhail
Temryukovich. By the end of the 16th century, the city received the
status of a county center.
In the 17th century, with the
beginning of the Time of Troubles, Gorokhovets fell under the control of
the Poles, and in 1610-1611 King Sigismund III granted it to his prince
Andrei Miloslavsky. With the beginning of the liberation movement, the
city again stood up for the defense of the Motherland. Gorokhovets was
among the first to join the popular movement.
In 1619, a nomadic
detachment of Ukrainian Cossacks ("Circassians") captured Gorokhovets
and burned the city's fortifications and buildings. This was the last
attack that the city was subjected to, by this period the functions of
the border fortress had already been lost, and the city's wooden
fortifications began to fall into disrepair and were gradually
destroyed.
According to the scribe books of 1628-1687,
Gorokhovets consisted of a small fortress cut down from oak on the
spur of the Puzhalova Mountain with a perimeter of 242 sazhens (500
m) and an urban settlement located under the mountain with a wooden
prison around the perimeter of 980 sazhens (2 km); a branch from the
Vladimir-Nizhny Novgorod road approached the gates of the fortress,
near the settlement there was a crossing over the Klyazma, from
which the road to Balakhna left. By 1628, the town's prison fell
into disrepair, and in 1643, the Nikolsky Monastery was founded on
the site of the fortress by a letter of Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich. In
1646, the city consisted of 217 households, there were 388 male
residents, 90% belonged to artisans and merchants.
In 1658,
by decree of Patriarch Nikon, the Vladimir (Sretensky) maiden
monastery was founded, located on the territory of the urban
settlement. In 1669, near the city, on the left bank of the Klyazma,
a small monastery was built at the expense of Pyotr Lopukhin and the
inhabitants of the city. In addition to the monastery churches, in
the center of the settlement there were the Annunciation Cathedral
and the Church of the Resurrection with bell towers and small
cemeteries near them, as well as a customs yard, a voivodship yard,
a yard for officials from Moscow, a zemstvo and moving out hut. All
buildings were wooden. By 1687, the male population of the city had
doubled, reaching 801 people, there were five tanneries and two oil
mills, 15 forges, 36 trading shops in the city, mills, distilleries
and breweries worked, gardening and horticulture developed.
The last decade of the 17th century was marked by the flourishing of
Gorokhovets and the emergence of wealthy merchant families of the
Ershovs, Shumilins, Selins, Sapozhnikovs, Shiryaevs, Sudoplatovs,
Kanonnikovs, who became rich in trade in goods along the Klyazma,
Oka and Volga.
In the middle of the 17th century, trade
flourished, and local merchants, who owned distilleries and
tanneries, built stone mansions instead of wooden chambers. At the
same time, stone ensembles of three monasteries were built here:
Znamensky, Nikolsky, Sretensky, as well as complexes of the parish
church of the Resurrection of Christ and the main city Cathedral of
the Annunciation.
In 1778, Gorokhovets was made a county town
of the Gorokhovets district of the Vladimir province. In 1883 there
were 24 stone houses and 381 wooden ones in Gorokhovets; 69 shops,
five churches and the Nicholas Monastery. In the sacristy of the
monastery were kept six royal and patriarchal letters. There were
2824 inhabitants in 1897; industry is not developed; in 1883 there
were three brick factories and one dye-works. There were many
gardens; the inhabitants were engaged in gardening and spinning fine
threads. Gorokhovets, together with the zemstvo, maintained a city
school and a women's school, an almshouse, maintained on interest
from the capital donated by the merchant Lakhmanov; Zemstvo hospital
for 12 beds, with an outpatient clinic.
Along with carpentry,
a common seasonal trade in the Gorokhovetsky district in the 19th
and early 20th centuries, there was a departure to the boiler
industry. The geography of the departure of metal craftsmen is
almost the entire Russian Empire from the Baltic and the Black Sea
to the Amur. The hands and skill of the Gorokhovets boiler-makers
built the Russian military metal fleet, railway bridges, some of
which are still in use. The Gorokhovites also implemented the
projects of the Russian engineer Vladimir Shukhov, including the
Shabolovskaya Tower.
In 1892, a peasant from the village of Gruzdevo, who
later became a merchant, S. I. Semenychev, founded a plant in
Gorokhovets for the production of metal ships, boilers and various metal
structures, which by the mid-1900s passed to an enterprising native of
Gorokhovets peasants-otkhodniks from the village. Departure, to the
manufacturer Ivan Alexandrovich Shorin, who also had shipbuilding
production in Gorokhovets. Shorin founded his Boiler and Shipbuilding
Plant in 1902, focusing it on the construction of metal oil and cargo
barges. In 1907, he received an order for the construction of the
largest oil barge in the world at that time, Marfa Posadnitsa, and
fulfilled it with honor. The construction of "Marfa Posadnitsa" and a
number of large barges for the Volga-Caspian basin brought the plant
into a number of recognized shipbuilding enterprises in Russia. In
addition to shipbuilding, the Shorin plant was engaged in the
reconstruction of locks on the Seversky Donets and Sheksna rivers, the
construction of oil tanks throughout Russia. The number of people
employed at the plant with seasonal workers reached one thousand people.
In the autumn of 1918, the Shorin plant was nationalized and became
known as the Gorohovets Shipyard.
Also in the city there were two
paper-wrapping factories, a cotton factory, about a dozen different
craft workshops.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the
second-guild merchant Mikhail Fedorovich Sapozhnikov (1836–1913), who
owned large stores in Kazan, Astrakhan, and Samara, and donated
significant funds to the needs of fellow countrymen, became the most
significant benefactor for Gorokhovets. Since 1882, these funds have
been used to build an almshouse, a city hospital, a city school, a
women's gymnasium, a pro-gymnasium, a higher primary school, and a water
supply system in the upper part of the city. In addition, he established
scholarships for both high school students and Gorokhovites - students
of higher educational institutions. Sapozhnikov maintained a fund for
poor brides, and in 1904 he took part in the creation of the City Public
Bank.
After the death of Sapozhnikov in 1913, the city of
Gorokhovets, by will, received a capital of 100,000 rubles, the interest
from which was used for public education. The charity work in
Gorokhovets was continued by Sapozhnikov's son Konstantin, who built the
Church of All Saints for the 253rd Reserve Infantry Regiment stationed
in the city in 1917-1919.
After the February Revolution, when a
wave of workers' demonstrations swept through the Vladimir province from
March to July, an 8-hour working day was introduced at Gorokhovets
enterprises in June. In July 1917, the infantry regiment stationed in
the city refused to go to the front - the propaganda work of the
Bolsheviks affected. In the first days of the October Revolution, the
Bolsheviks established Soviet power in the city.
In August 1919, Gorokhovets was visited by the
All-Russian Commission for the Preservation and Disclosure of Monuments
of Old Russian Painting, during which the main monuments were taken into
account. The city made a strong impression on the head of the
commission, Igor Emmanuilovich Grabar, with its well-preserved unique
architecture and an abundance of old buildings.
Since 1924,
shipbuilding has revived in the city, in the pre-war period, the
Gorokhovets shipbuilding plant, which produces river tugboats and
barges, became the main industrial enterprise. In Soviet times, the
scale and technical level of production were continuously growing.
During the Great Patriotic War, 17,000 residents of Gorokhovka and
the region went to the front, 39 of them participated in the heroic
defense of the Brest Fortress. Ten people received the title of Hero of
the Soviet Union during the war years. The streets of the city are named
after two of them, Alexander Besedin and Nikolai Krasnov. For the needs
of the front, the shipbuilders of the city produced about 200 landing
motorboats, which took an active part in landing operations on the
fronts of the war.
In the post-war period, the Gorokhovets
Shipbuilding Plant underwent a large-scale modernization and switched to
the production of marine vessels. Project 498 offshore tugs, barges, dry
cargo, fishing, diving and auxiliary vessels for the Navy were produced.
By the 1980s, after the closure of the shipbuilding program at
Petrozavod, it became the country's leading enterprise in the production
of port tilting tugs and the only shipbuilding plant in the Vladimir
region. The number of employees reached 3500 people. The plant made a
significant contribution to the development of the city and was stopped
in the 1990s, and by the beginning of the 2000s, the enterprise's
infrastructure had already been destroyed.
The second major
enterprise in the city was the lifting and transport equipment plant
(ZPTO, now Elevatormelmash), founded in 1961 on the basis of an auto
repair production. Conveyors, hoists, overhead cranes became products;
the number of employees reached 1500 people. The plant is still in
operation, having greatly reduced production volumes. In addition to
these enterprises, about a dozen smaller industries operated in the
city, food, furniture, construction, and agriculture. Gorokhovets was
also the center of an agricultural region with developed livestock
farming, the number of cattle in the Soviet period reached 20,000 heads.
The growth of industrial production and active housing construction
in the years 1950-1990 caused a significant increase in the population
of the city.
In 1970, Gorokhovets was included in the list of
historical cities of Russia with monuments of great value. He entered
the system of the tourist route "Golden Ring of Russia". The enterprise
"Vladimirspetsrestavratsiya" has developed a project for the
transformation of the historical core of the city into a museum and
tourist center. The house of the merchant Ershov (Sapozhnikov), the
Baptist Church, the houses of Kanonnikov, Oparin, Shorin, the ensemble
of government offices, the Church of John of the Ladder, the Sretensky
Cathedral, the Church of the Sign, the Church of All Saints were
restored. In 1972, a folk museum (Gorokhovets Municipal Historical and
Architectural Museum) was opened in the premises of the former Church of
John the Baptist.
In 2010, Gorokhovets was included in the list of
historical settlements of federal significance.
On May 28, 2014,
Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree "On the celebration of
the 850th anniversary of the founding of the city of Gorokhovets." The
anniversary celebration took place in 2018.
On May 7, 2016, the
first tourist center was opened in Gorokhovets. The Gorokhovets TIC
offers tourists information about the tourist sites of the city,
souvenirs and handicrafts, the opportunity to order a tour of
Gorokhovets and the surrounding area, etc.
On March 7, 2017,
Gorokhovets was included in the provisional UNESCO World Heritage List.
Gorokhovets was accepted at once according to two criteria: the object
reflects the impact that the alternation of human values within a
certain period or a certain cultural region of the world has on the
development of architecture or technology, urban planning or landscape
planning; the object is an outstanding example of a type of building,
architectural or technological ensemble or landscape, illustrating an
important stage in the history of mankind.
Although Gorokhovets belongs to the Vladimir region, it
gravitates towards Nizhny Novgorod in terms of transport.
By
train
Gorokhovets station is located 10 km from the city on the
main line Moscow - Nizhny Novgorod. From long-distance trains,
Lastochka stops on it, plying between these cities (twice a day in
each direction, in the morning and in the evening, from Moscow 3-3.5
hours, from Nizhny - 50 minutes).
Suburban traffic is active
with Nizhny Novgorod (up to 15 pairs per day, usually 1.5 hours on
the way, although sometimes they are faster or longer). In the
western direction, 1-2 direct trains to Vladimir (3 hours), two or
three more go to Kovrov or to neighboring Vyazniki.
1 Station
Gorokhovets, pos. Velikovo (10 km southwest of the city on the road
towards Pavlovo). Freshly renovated with a hint of retro style, the
station contains a waiting room (on Sunday evening before the
departure of the Lastochka to Moscow it is crowded) and ticket
offices. On the square south of the station there is a supermarket
"Malinka" (8:00-21:00).
Bus 106 runs to the city (on the way 20
minutes to the very center (Patolichev Square) and 15 to urban
development), the schedule of which, on the one hand, is quite
extensive (every 1-2 hours), and on the other hand, is not always
tied to trains and sometimes differs from what is indicated on the
Internet. A taxi to the center of Gorokhovets costs 200 rubles.
By bus
Several times a day you can go to Vladimir (2 hours 15
minutes, or half an hour longer if the bus calls in Kovrov) and
Nizhny Novgorod (from 1 hour 30 minutes). Suburban communication
with neighboring Vyazniki is active (40 min). Of the destinations
outside the M7, Murom is present (4 flights per day, 1.5-2 hours).
2 Cash desk Gorokhovets (intercity bus stop), st. Gagarina, 3
(not far from the highway). A full-fledged bus station in
Gorokhovets is closed, only a ticket booth operates, which does not
even have a toilet. Travelers in this place can only be happy that
the nearest attraction, the modern house of Kuchin, is only a
hundred meters away. The commuter bus stop at the old (closed) bus
station, which was in a slightly different location, is still called
the "bus station", which creates some confusion.
By car
The federal highway M7 "Volga" passes through Gorokhovets. In the
eastern direction 87 km to Nizhny Novgorod, in the western direction
- 38 km to Vyazniki, 160 km to Vladimir, 320 km to Moscow (MKAD). A
little to the west of the city, a road to Murom (95 km) departs from
the highway, and another local road leads from Gorokhovets to a
pontoon crossing across the Oka (not open all year round, check
before the trip) near the town of Pavlovo (45 km).
Several bus lines that don't run at all on Sundays and hardly run
on Saturdays, and even on weekdays the frequency is such that it's
usually easier to walk. The commuter bus 106 mentioned above runs to
the train station on the weekends, and if you come across it, it can
also be used inside the city. Almost all routes start at Patolicheva
Square in the center, and the main junction is the same Bus Station
stop at the intersection of Lenina Street and the highway. Schedules
are posted on the Internet, they are also on Yandex, but changes are
not always promptly taken into account there, but there is no
information anywhere on the fare, except, apparently, the buses
themselves.
Also in the city you can use taxi services (LED
inscription on the windshield), which are on duty in some places of
the city.
Guest House "Puzhalova Izba", st. Komsomolskaya, 59-A (On the
Puzhalovaya Mountain). info@puzhalova-izba.ru ☎ +7 (920) 907-29-12.
The whole House from 3000 rubles (2015).
Motel "Aquarius", st.
Red Army, 1. motel-vodoley@mail.ru ☎ +7 (49238) 2-18-40. Double
room: from 2500 rubles (2011). Contradictory reviews.
Hotel
Gorokhovetsky College (Yubileinaya), st. Besedins, 12. ☎ +7 (49238)
2-17-80. Double room: 1000 rub (2010).
Hotel complex "Merchant
manor", st. Lenin, 44. ☎ +7 (49238) 2-30-22. Double room: from 2200
rubles (2011).
M7 Motel, st. Moscow, 21 (on the highway). ☎ +7
(49238) 2-22-11, (920) 051-77-44. Double room: from 1500 RUB (2010).
Clean and comfortable roadside motel
Cafe M7, st. Moscow, 21. A good cafe at the eponymous motel. The
decor is roadside, but the food is delicious.
Restaurant "Rest"
Otdyx-Отдых, st. Besedina, 4.
Puzhalova Gora is a burial ground with 105 burial mounds on the southern outskirts of Gorokhovets on the high terrace of the Klyazma River. 30 burials under mounds and flat burials not marked by mounds were found. Skeletal remains were found in the grave pits, lying on their backs and head to the west, most of them unfurnished. Among the grave goods found in several graves were household items from the second half of the 12th - the first half of the 13th century. The funeral rite is a common Russian tradition of the XII century. The burial mound on Puzhalova Gora is known as one of the easternmost burial mounds and marks the eastern outskirts of the territory where the kurgan rite was spread in medieval Rus' in the 11th-12th centuries. In a rectangular grave pit 50 cm deep under the mound (No. 80, height 50 cm, diameter 5 m) were the skeletal remains of a man about 50 years old. The deceased lay on his back, head to the west, arms bent, palms on his chest. The funeral rite is similar to other graves of Puzhalova Gora, including the decorations of the second half of the 12th - the first half of the 13th century. In the GOR001 sample (Gorokhovets, Puzhalova gora), the mitochondrial haplogroup K1c1h and the Y-chromosomal haplogroup R1a1a1b1a1b1-Y286678 were identified. On the territory of the Sretensky Monastery, under the building of a cell built at the end of the 17th century, during rescue excavations, burials of the 13th-15th centuries were discovered. The cemetery was an ordinary necropolis of a small medieval town and had no connection with the monastery founded in 1658. The burial rite with western-oriented unfurnished burials in pits follows the generally accepted medieval tradition of Rus'. In the GOS001 sample (Gorokhovets, Sretensky monastery), the mitochondrial haplogroup I1a1a, the Y-chromosomal haplogroup I2a1b2a1 were determined, in the GOS002 sample (Gorokhovets, Sretensky monastery), the mitochondrial haplogroup U3a3 and the Y-chromosomal haplogroup R1a1a1b1a2a were determined, in the G sample OS003 (Gorokhovets, Sretensky monastery) - mitochondrial haplogroup I1a1 and Y-chromosome haplogroup N1a1-Z1979.