Pskov, Russia

Pskov

 

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Description of Pskov

Pskov is a city (since 903) in the north-west of Russia, the administrative center of the Pskov region and the Pskov district. It forms the urban district of Pskov located on the Great River at its confluence with the Pskova River.

Pskov is one of the oldest cities in Russia, first mentioned in the Laurentian Chronicle under the year 903. In the years 1348-1510 - the capital of the independent Pskov Republic. In 1510 it was attached to the Grand Duchy of Moscow. Until the beginning of the 18th century, Pskov was one of the largest cities in Russia and Europe, the most important defensive and commercial center of the country. The Pskov fortress consisted of five fortress rings (three of which are preserved to this day), which made Pskov almost impregnable. Throughout its centuries-old history, Pskov has more than once become the center for conducting major hostilities, but was taken only once, not counting the occupation during both world wars. After the founding of St. Petersburg, Pskov lost its dominant position on the western frontiers of the country, and after the Northern War, the borders shifted far to the west and Riga and Revel (now Tallinn) moved away from Russia, the value of Pskov as a trading and defense center finally fell. During World War II, the city was occupied by Germany for three years, during which time 3.5 thousand civilians were killed. In December 2009, Pskov was awarded the title "City of Military Glory."

The population of the city - 210 501 people. (2018).

Pskov is an important tourist center of the Pskov region and northwest Russia. Trinity Cathedral, Pskov Fortress, Mirozhsky Monastery, Pogankin Chamber, a number of ancient churches of Pskov are included in the list of the cultural heritage of the Russian Federation. The city is also a major transportation hub, it is located at the intersection of railways and major highways. Developed a network of urban buses.

 

Orientation

The city is located on both sides of the Velikaya River at the confluence of the Pskov River. Almost all the main attractions are located in three historical districts, which are bordered by these two rivers. The central part of the city includes the territory inside the walls of the Round City, bounded by Velikaya and Pskovaya, Zapskovye (locals have long emphasized the first syllable) include the area on the right bank of the Pskov, and Zavelichye is located on the left bank of the Velikaya.

The banks of the Great are connected by three bridges. The Olginsky Bridge passes near the Kremlin, connecting the main street of the right bank - Oktyabrsky Prospekt, with the main Zavelichya highway - Rizhsky Prospekt. Two more bridges - the 50th anniversary of October and Alexander Nevsky - are respectively upstream and downstream of the Great. The main monuments of Zapskovye are concentrated on the main street of the district, named after the hero of the Soviet era - Leon Pozemsky. She goes to the bridge over Pskov, the closest to its mouth (above the Kremlin). Relatively few monuments of Zavelichya are located not far from Velikaya (Mirozhsky Monastery is near the bridge located upstream), and the central part of the city can be fully explored only by systematically combing its territory.

The railway and bus stations are nearby, about half an hour walk from the Kremlin (you can get there by bus).

 

Features of urban architecture

The construction of the Pskov fortress began, apparently, shortly after the attack of the Polotsk prince Rogvolod in 977 around the first settlements of the Krivichi, located either on a high hill between Pskovskaya and Velikaya, or on Gorodets, a small hill located south of Dovmontov city, now Soviet Square. The population of the city grew, gradually populating the territory of the Sredny and Okolny city, and after it the fortress was overgrown with new defensive belts of walls, towers and ramparts, the last of which was the wall of the Round City, completed only in the 16th century. The city fortifications were last updated by Peter I in anticipation of a Swedish attack during the Great Northern War.

The territory within the walls of the Round City was inhabited already in the 12th-13th centuries, although at first it was characterized by a low building density. Low wooden structures were concentrated around the main city highways already established at that time, branching off from the Old Market on Gorodets - Velikaya (now Sovetskaya), Trupekhovskaya (Oktyabrsky Prospekt), Petrovskaya (Karl Marx Street) and Zvanitsa (Leon Pozemsky Street). Already in these early wooden buildings, a characteristic feature of Pskov architecture was manifested - the ability to link many separate buildings into a single asymmetrical composition.

The first stone buildings appeared in Pskov in the second half of the 12th century. Among them are the Cathedral of the Mirozhsky Monastery and the second Trinity Cathedral. Perhaps, the Ivanovsky Monastery Cathedral should be added to this list, there is no consensus on the date of construction of which - the XII or XIII century. All of them were far from what was later called the Pskov architectural style, and copied contemporary churches from other places. As an independent architectural style, the Pskov school developed in the second half of the 14th century and continued to be enriched with new finds until the end of the 17th century. She perfected her techniques in the first half of the 14th century during the construction of the Konchan temples (the ends were called the unit of the administrative division of the city) and a huge number of monasteries. Practical expediency was put at the forefront in Pskov architecture, and artistic expressiveness was achieved by a set of simple means with a minimum of decor.

The main type of Pskov temple in the 15th-16th centuries was a three-apse cubic structure with one dome resting on four pillars. The first temples of this type had a cover of sixteen slopes, but with the simplification of the design of the vaults, a very effective eight-slope cover arose. In the XIV-XV centuries, the composition of the temples began to be supplemented with aisles, narthexes, galleries and belfries. Asymmetric compositions were built from these volumes, in which the belfries were displaced from the axis of the temple, the dimensions of their pillars and spans were not aligned, the aisles were set deliberately asymmetrically, and the chapels were arranged at random angles. At the beginning of the 16th century, free-standing belfries on high pillar-like structures came into use. Their appearance was explained both by the increase in the mass of the bells and by the need to raise them above the city growing upwards. Another detail of the Pskov style was the stone porches protruding from the volume of buildings. They appeared in the civil architecture of the 17th century, but soon began to be used as a new decorative element in the reconstruction of old temples.

The traditional forms of decoration of Pskov churches were formed already in the 15th century and then hardly changed. Among them is the famous three-row ornamental belt on apses and drums, consisting of two curbs with a runner in the middle, and in the 16th century, tiled belts and inscriptions on drums entered the arsenal of decorative means. The apses were decorated with roller patterns, and the facades were divided by blades with blades at the ends. All these simple and not laborious elements used the specific properties of local limestone slabs and were used to decorate almost all Pskov churches.

Stone civil architecture also developed in the 16th century. Its application was the monastic refectories, fraternal buildings and merchant stone chambers, consisting of storage rooms on the first floor and living rooms on the second. For the most part, these buildings were not lucky: they quickly fell into disrepair after their owners, wealthy merchants, were deported to Moscow in 1569.

The heyday of stone civil construction falls on the 17th century, when more than one hundred stone merchant chambers were built in the city, although the wooden houses of poor citizens still dominated. During the century, the forms of residential stone buildings have undergone very noticeable changes. Massive five-story chambers of the first half of the century were gradually replaced by more comfortable and smaller two-story buildings. In the last third of the 17th century, the chambers acquired a very complex three-dimensional composition, including the famous Pskov massive porches. There were also industrial buildings made of stone, distinguished by their extreme simplicity and functionality.

The civil buildings of Pskov were made of a very thick and durable local slab, had an unusually large wall thickness (up to 2 meters), their facades usually had neither horizontal nor vertical division, and the windows were located only in the upper floors of buildings and, most often, without any rhythmic pattern. Almost under all the old houses there were deep cellars covered with massive vaults. In ancient times, water ditches with drawbridges were often made around buildings, so that they turned into well-fortified fortresses.

Pskov of the 17th century remained a city of a completely different layout and scale than modern Pskov. From the geometry of the ancient city, only the main streets have come down to us, and the dimensions of the old quarters, streets and courtyards have nothing in common with today's city. In the 17th century, the now empty spaces between the old churches were occupied by many residential buildings and courtyards. Everything changed in the 18th century, the beginning of which turned into preparations for the Northern War, which paralyzed the life of the city. The expansion of the state's borders that followed after the war and the opening of new trade routes deprived Pskov of its former commercial significance, gradually turning it into a provincial town. Fires and epidemics gave rise to wastelands on the site of a recently dense building. The end of the 18th-century replanning project of the city by I. Leim completed the work, the purpose of which was to create an aesthetic order in the spirit of the new time by replacing old buildings.

During the Great Patriotic War, Pskov was severely destroyed, and, in fact, only after the war did the restoration of the ancient architectural heritage of the city begin, which has not been completed to this day.

 

Destinations in Pskov

Pskov has a great variety of all sorts of wonderful monuments. If you choose the most interesting among them, then, of course, you can’t miss the Pskov Krom - the core of the ancient fortress, in which the Trinity Cathedral of the 17th century reigns - the main architectural dominant of the city, attracting the eye even from remote points of the city.

Of the many monasteries in the city, only two complete ensembles have survived - Mirozhsky and Snetogorsky monasteries. But they are interesting, first of all, for their frescoes. In the Cathedral of the Transfiguration of the Savior of the Mirozhsky Monastery, there are the only pre-Mongolian frescoes of the 12th century in the country in terms of the degree of preservation, and in the cathedral of the Snetogorsky Monastery you can see slightly later and worse preserved frescoes of the 14th century.

The Pskov fortress in ancient times was the only one in Rus' in terms of size, power and beauty, and therefore deserves special attention. The fortifications are well preserved and include Krom, the walls of the Dovmont city and the last fortress wall encircling the Roundabout city and the ancient part of Zapskovye.

Perhaps the strongest impression of Pskov remains when you get acquainted with its church architecture. There are not many cities in Russia where in a small area you can find more than two dozen stone churches that appeared no later than the 16th century. Remarkable in their simplicity and conciseness, the one-domed Pskov churches with four-slope or amazing eight-slope roofs are distinguished by a well-thought-out asymmetry of narthexes and aisles. Massive porches, free-standing or placed on the side wall of the belfry, belts in the upper part of the apses and drums - all these are signs by which Pskov churches can be easily recognized. If there is no time to inspect all the Pskov churches, and they certainly deserve it, then you can limit yourself to a few of the most outstanding monuments - the Cathedral of John the Baptist (1240) in Zavelichye, as well as the churches of Peter and Paul from the Buy (1373), St. Nicholas on Usokhe ( 1536), Vasily on Gorka (XVI century), Assumption at the Ferry (1521) and Epiphany in Zapskovye (1494).

And, finally, in Pskov you can find many monuments of civil architecture, including several chambers of the 17th century, although not all of them are in satisfactory condition. The best preserved among them are Pogankin's chambers, where you can get acquainted with the internal structure of ancient buildings.

The city also has a fair amount of monuments of the 18th-20th centuries. But only a very meticulous tourist, who is ready to spend several days exploring the city, will get to the point of studying them.

 

Pskov fortress

The Pskov fortress had several defensive lines, among which Krom was the most fortified - this is how the Pskovians called the central part of the fortress from ancient times. Located on an impregnable hill, Krom is protected from enemies by powerful stone walls erected on the banks of two rivers - Pskov and Velikaya.

The second defensive belt of the fortress is the wall of the city of Dovmont adjoining Krom from the south. From the next two walls - the walls of the posadnik Boris (1309) and the walls of the Middle City (1375) - almost nothing has been preserved. The first one ran along the line of modern Profsoyuznaya Street and rounded off to the Pskov River near the Church of Peter and Paul from the Buy, the second went from the Mstislav Tower (1375) along the modern Pushkin Street, leaving on Pskov opposite the modern Church of the Epiphany in Zapskovye. The last belt of fortifications, almost completely preserved to this day, form the walls of Zapskovye and the Roundabout city.

At one time, the Pskov fortress was the largest in Rus': its walls were more than 9 kilometers long, covering an area of ​​215 hectares.

 

Pskov Krom

Krom stands on a high cliff, its western wall stretches along the Velikaya River, and the eastern one along Pskov. In the breaks of the fortress walls there are towers: Smerdya (Dovmontov) and Kutekroma (Kutnyaya) - above the Great, Sredny (Snetnaya) and Troitskaya (Sentry) - above Pskov. Between the Trinity and Smerdya towers, devoid of a natural water barrier, and therefore the least protected part of the fortress, called the Persians (or Pershes), lies. Until the 12th century, the fortress had only one passage gate at the Smerdya Tower, and at the end of the 12th century, the Trinity or Great Gates were broken through - the only entrance to Krom in our time. Once in the fortress there were two impassable gates overlooking Pskov: Small Troitsky - not far from the Trinity Tower and the "gate" - between the Middle Tower and Kutekroma. The latter were located opposite the pier and served to deliver supplies.

The chronicles do not report anything about the date of the construction of the walls of Krom. Archaeologists distinguish three pre-chronic stages of their construction: wooden walls on the shaft of the 8th-10th centuries; stone walls without mortar along the inner side of the rampart of the 10th-13th centuries and, finally, stone walls of the 13th century bonded with mortar on the outer side of the rampart. Chronicles say that the first tower of Krom was Smerdya, together with the walls of Krom it existed already in the 30s of the XIV century. Trinity and Kutnyaya towers appeared in 1400–1401, the Middle Tower finally took shape in 1419. Percy was renewed several times - in 1337, in 1424 and 1465. In 1424, first a wooden, and then a stone bell tower was installed in Persia, which has not survived to our time. On it were placed the bells of the Trinity Cathedral and the veche bell, taken to Moscow in 1510 as a sign of the loss of independence by Pskov.

In 1861-1871, Perseus was restored according to the design of Konstantin Ton. It was then that the powerful and round Smerdya tower turned into a small faceted turret, which received a new name - the Dovmontov Tower. The Trinity Gates were also rebuilt. During the restoration of recent years, the Tonovsky gates were rebuilt, and together with them the Trinity Tower, which had not existed since the 18th century, was erected from the ground.

In the 15th century, a zahab appeared at the Trinity Gate on the inside of Krom - a narrow passage fired from above - which greatly complicated the life of the attackers: having taken the outer gate, the enemy was forced to storm the inner ones, and all this - under continuous fire from the walls of the zakhab. Contrary to the practice of the time, the zahab was curved, making it completely pointless to shoot inside it.

Krom welcomes its guests with a grandiose spectacle - over the almost deserted space of the former veche square rises the stunning and, by Pskov standards, very young Trinity Cathedral 1 . The fourth in a row on this site, the cathedral of the late 17th century is made in the traditions of Moscow architecture, but harmoniously fits into the internal ensemble of the fortress. Its predecessors were a wooden church of the end of the 10th century, according to legend, founded by Princess Olga before the Baptism of Rus', and two stone structures of the 12th and 14th centuries. The first stone cathedral was erected in 1137-1138 (according to other sources in the 1180s or 1190s) and existed until the collapse of the vaults in 1363. A new cathedral was founded on the same foundation in 1365. Judging by the image that has come down to us, it was a temple with a powerful main volume, crowned with an unusual elliptical dome. The cathedral was covered with a sixteen-slope roof and had six aisles surrounding the main volume of the building. This cathedral was badly damaged by the fire of 1562 and the explosion of gunpowder stores in Krom in 1609. Therefore, in 1682, a new five-domed Trinity Cathedral was laid, towering over Pskov to this day.

The year of consecration of the fourth Trinity Cathedral is considered to be 1699, but in fact at that moment its construction was still ongoing. The cathedral survived several fires and restorations. In 1770, after another fire, galleries of the lower floor were laid to strengthen the walls and buttresses were attached to them. In the 19th century, the porch of the 17th century with steep steps was replaced with a more gentle one, from which it moved close to the fortress wall. Initially, the domes of the cathedral had a silver color, and the central dome was first gilded only in 1852. On the occasion of the 1000th anniversary of the Baptism of Rus', the gilding on the central dome was again restored, and the rest of the domes were covered with copper that darkened over time.

Like all Pskov churches, the Trinity Cathedral is made of limestone slabs. As a rule, the surface of chipped slabs was left untreated, which, thanks to the play of chiaroscuro, gave the illusion of a stucco surface. The Trinity Cathedral was built of hewn slabs, which gave its facades geometric regularity, and to enliven its smooth surfaces, discreet relief decor was used in the form of a belt of widths with colored tiles, a cornice under the roof and ending with arches of blades. The drums of the cathedral are processed with shoulder blades and platbands in a style close to the early Petrine baroque.

Inside, the white walls of the cathedral were not originally painted (the existing painting of the vaults and drums appeared later) and its only decoration was a giant seven-tiered iconostasis of the turn of the 17th-18th centuries with the upper tiers of the late 18th-early 19th centuries. The iconostasis has come down to us almost in its original form, and the gilded carving used to frame it is not inferior in value to icon painting. There are several ancient icons in the cathedral: "Our Lady of Chir" of the 15th century, "Trinity" of the 16th century and two icons of Our Lady of Tikhvin. Near the northern wall there is a huge mosaic icon "Trinity", made in 1942 by the artist E.E. Klimov. The basement of the temple used to serve as a tomb, first of the Pskov princes, and then of its saints. Now it houses a church with a new iconostasis, and the tombs of their ancestors have gone under the floor.

The bell tower was built immediately after the Trinity Cathedral on the massive foundation of the unpreserved Kremlin tower. You can fully appreciate its size only from the Sovetsky Bridge or from the opposite bank of Pskov, from where a magnificent view of Krom opens. The bell tower was built by local craftsmen and looks older than the cathedral due to the uneven masonry characteristic of the Pskov style. Some disharmony of the lower part of the bell tower and its "Peter's" spire is explained by its later appearance: the spire, the ringing tiers, and the tower clock appeared only at the end of the 18th century, replacing the burned-out wooden top. On the bell tower there are several ancient bells of the 16th century with the dates of manufacture and the names of the masters who cast them.

Stretching from one wall to another, the Trinity Cathedral divides Krom into two unequal parts with the only passage between them - an arch under the cathedral staircase. On the southern side of the cathedral there is a deserted space - the former veche square. On all images of Krom of the 16th-18th centuries, the single-domed Annunciation Cathedral is shown next to the Smerdya Tower, and its first mention dates back to 1485. In the 1830s, a new Annunciation Cathedral was erected, which was demolished a century later. Right next to Perseus, from the 16th century, there was a wooden Vladychen yard, which burned down in 1788. And earlier in its place there was a powder warehouse, which died in the fire of a terrible fire in 1562.

A large area on the north side of the cathedral is now almost empty: there are powder magazines and a clergy house. However, the findings of archaeologists say that it was from this territory that the settlement of Pskov began in the 2nd-3rd centuries AD. Later, already in the time of Krom, this territory was well guarded and used to store food supplies, valuable property and merchant goods, and later as a gunpowder warehouse. By the way, the Kutekroma tower is clearly visible from here. According to legend, A.S. admired the views from it. Pushkin, who came to Pskov from Mikhailovsky.

 

Dovmontov city

The next defensive line of the fortress was the walls of the so-called Dovmont city adjacent to the southern part of Krom, the creation of which is attributed to the Lithuanian prince Dovmont, baptized Timothy, who reigned in Pskov from 1266 to 1299. In the 10th century, craftsmen lived on the territory of the Dovmontov city, and Torg was also located there, under the walls of Krom, which in the 13th century left the walls of the Dovmontov city. With the advent of the walls of the Roundabout city of Dovmontov, the city lost its defensive significance and in the 17th century civil structures appeared on its territory - the Order and Hospital Chambers. At the beginning of the 18th century, on the orders of Peter I, three temples of the Dovmont city, looking at Pskov, were decapitated and turned into batteries and bastions, and the rest of the temples were used as weapons depots. At the end of the 19th century, Dovmontov turned into a wasteland, and vegetables and fruits were traded on its territory. During the Great Patriotic War, a German anti-aircraft battery stood here.

Now the city of Dovmont is a kind of Pskov Pompeii: the foundations of ancient temples discovered by archaeologists. You can get into it either through the Rybnitsa Tower (destroyed in the 1780s, it was restored in the 1970s by Pskov restorers in “ancient forms”), or through the iron gate between the Order Chambers of the 17th century and the former building of the Spiritual Consistory of the 19th century, now tour desk. These gates, devoid of any artistic content, were put in place of the baroque front gates of the 19th century that survived the war. Previously, there were arched gates with a raised top at this place - they are shown on the icon “The Vision of the Elder Dorotheus”, which was previously in the Gostiny Dvor near the shop of the merchant Zhiglevich and is known as the “Zhiglevich icon”. It is interesting that on this icon in the wall of the city of Dovmont from the side of the Velikaya River one more gate is shown.

In the 15th-16th centuries, the city of Dovmont was densely built up with various kinds of structures. Near the western wall was the Prince's Court, in the southwestern corner there were several civil buildings, and the rest of the space was occupied by churches, of which there were 17 or 18 at that time. The churches were rather big, had side chapels and narthexes, tombs, courtyards and cemeteries with fences. Several of the first temples were built by Dovmont himself, in one of them he was buried (later his relics were transferred to the Trinity Cathedral). The most intensive construction took place in the 14th century, when wooden temples were replaced by stone ones, and new stone ones were erected in place of the old ones. According to archaeologists, most of the churches were painted. The frescoes taken from the wall from the ancient Church of the Intercession are being restored in the Hermitage, and the frescoes of the Church of St. Nicholas on Grebl can be seen in the Pskov Museum. By the way, Pskovians called Rowing a deep ditch at the foot of Perseus, which served as an additional line of defense for Krom.

The only historical building that has been preserved on the territory of the city of Dovmont is the Order Chambers of the end of the 17th century, where the museum exposition is now located with the interior of the 17th century recreated on the second floor. The chambers were erected in 1693-1695 and were used, in modern terms, as office space for managers and state bureaucracy. During the Northern War, on the orders of Peter I, the roof was knocked down, and the building was covered with turf and turned into an arsenal. The heavy porch, once compositionally balanced by the high figured roof of the building, was restored according to the excavated foundation and the surviving description.

From the territory of the city of Dovmont, you can get to the Vlasiev tower, which got its name from the nearby church of St. Blaise on Torgovishche, built almost at the end of the 10th century. The Vlasyevskaya Tower was erected in 1376-1377, rebuilt in the 16th century and is the second in the Pskov fortress, yielding in size only to the southernmost tower of the Round City - Pokrovskaya. A steep staircase in the tower leads to the observation deck, from where wonderful views of Zavelichye open up, and Krom appears in a very unusual perspective. True, the glazed windows of the observation deck interfere with capturing these beauties.

 

City fortifications

The wall of the posadnik Boris, which ran along modern Profsoyuznaya Street, was built in 1309 and, in order not to hamper the development of the Middle City, was dismantled in the middle of the 15th century. The construction of large defensive structures of the Middle City began in the 1370s and was completed in the mid-1490s.

The southern section of the wall of the Middle City was erected in 1374-1375. It started from the Burkovsky "bonfire", which later received the name of the Kislinskaya, and then the Mstislavskaya tower. Further, perpendicular to the river, the wall went east to Velikaya (Soviet) Street, where it turned to the northeast and walked along the current Pushkin Street, from where it continued to the bank of Pskova approximately along the modern Krasnyh Partizan Street. The ruins of this wall have been preserved in some places and can be seen not far from the Yamsky chambers or near the Velikaya River.

There were ten towers on this section of the wall, of which only one has survived - Mstislavskaya, built into the wall of the Round City, which runs along the coast of the Great. Most of the wall between the Middle and Roundabout cities was broken at the end of the 18th century, the fortress moat that once existed there was filled up and no borders between the Middle and Roundabout cities now remain, as, however, the building style of these parts of Pskov is indistinguishable. The territory outside the walls of the Middle City was called by the locals the Field, and the southwestern part of the Field received its own name - Polonishche.

In the middle of the 15th century, first a wooden wall was built in Zapskovye, and at the end of the 15th century a stone wall was built. In the Round City in 1465, a wooden wall protected the territory between Velikaya and Pskov from the southeast, covering the entire Polonishche. The stone wall appeared much later, by the 70s of the 16th century. The fortress was fortified with stone towers, zahabs protruding beyond the walls, and underground counter-mine galleries - rumors. Only the so-called Lower Grids remained wooden - a wall with two gates that blocked access to the city through the mouth of the Pskov. But on both sides of the Lower Grids, there were already two stone towers born in 1500 - Ploskaya on the side of Krom and High in Zapskovye. In the 17th century, at the mouth of the Pskov River, a stone wall was erected with arched openings and gratings made of wrought iron logs. The upper gratings that blocked the entrance to the river in the region of Gremyachaya Gora were rebuilt in stone as early as 1526, at the same time the Kozmodemyanskaya (Gremyachaya) tower appeared above them.

The walls of the Roundabout City are well preserved in many places, but in some places they have been restored. They pass along the embankment of the Velikaya River and Sverdlov Street and continue in Zapskovye along Gremyachaya and Zastennaya streets, ending with the High Tower at the mouth of Pskov. These walls still define the layout of the central part of the city to this day. Visible in many places, sometimes they are suddenly lost among the earthen ramparts, ditches and green spaces that run along the wall. In some places, gaps are found in the wall, facilitating movement between the "internal" and "walled" parts of the city. And at the Gremyachaya tower, where the wall intersects with the Pskov one, there is one of the most picturesque places in the city. In Zapskovye, closer to the Lower Grids, there is a section of the wall where restorers have not yet set foot. It is here that you can see the original ancient walls, retaining in some places even the original plastering.

Today, to one degree or another, several towers of the Roundabout city have been preserved. At the mouth of the Pskov River, the Flat and High towers are located opposite each other. In ancient times, between this picturesquely located pair were the Lower Grids. The largest in girth in Europe, the Flat Tower completes the Krom wall, which runs along the Great Tower and, together with the High Tower, is one of the most photographed objects. Both towers at the beginning of the 20th century were “picturesque ruins”, but were restored.

From the High Tower, the fortress wall of Zapskovye begins, going at first along the Great Tower and turning to the northeast at the nearby corner Varlaam Tower. Round in cross section, it was known in antiquity under the name of Naugolnaya and has come down to us in a dilapidated state. From the Varlaamovskaya Tower along Zastennaya Street there is a section of the wall where no restoration work was carried out, and therefore the wall and the moat along it have retained their original appearance. At the confluence of Zastennaya Street with Leon Pozemsky Street, the Varlaam Gates previously stood, over which the long-destroyed old Varlaam Tower towered (it was from it that the name passed to the former Naugolnaya Tower). The earth embankment in front of the gate is the remains of the fortifications of 1701.

The wall continues further up to Oleg Koshevoy Street. On Zastennaya Street, approximately between the 19th and 20th houses, the ruins of the Bykovskaya Tower are visible, and in the northernmost part of the fortress, where Zastennaya Street turns to the southeast, the remains of the Zagryazhsky Zakhab and the Volkovskaya Tower have been preserved.

After Oleg Koshevoy Street, the wall appears only in places. A piece of the wall has been preserved next to the Obrazskaya Church from Zhabya Lavitsa, and between its spindles are the ruins of the Obrazsky Zahab. Another section of the wall, ending with the Deaf Tower, is located behind the intersection with Labor Street. The blind tower is distinguished by a rectangular section and has only two tiers.

The Gremyachaya (Kozmodemyanskaya) Tower near the Upper Grids is located in one of the most picturesque places in the city, from where a wonderful view of Pskov opens with thickets of bushes, green lawns and weeping willows. The tower was erected on a natural limestone rock, it has a height of about 19 meters, a diameter at the base is 14 meters, and the thickness of the walls of its lower tier reaches five meters. The tower has six combat tiers. They are equipped with loopholes and connected by stone stairs going through the thickness of the walls. The tower with the stepped vaults preserved inside is worthy of inspection from the inside, although the ceilings between the tiers have not been preserved.

The romantic appearance of the tower and the ruins surrounding it gave rise in the 19th century to legends about the beautiful sleeping princess, countless treasures buried in the tower - her dowry - and the evil spirit guarding the dream of the princess and her wealth. The same legend claims that at night a mysterious ringing of buried gold is heard in the tower, for which it got its name.

Not far from the intersection of Spegalskogo (former Mikhailovskaya) and Sverdlov streets, there is a well-preserved round four-tiered tower Mikhailovskaya Tower. Next to it there used to be the Mikhailovsky Gate, which, together with all the surrounding objects, got its name from the nearby Mikhailovsky Monastery.

Even further, at the intersection of Karl Marx and Sverdlov streets, there is a low round Petrovsky tower. It is named, apparently, from the Petrovsky end - the area of ancient Pskov. Nearby in ancient times stood the Petrovsky Gates, which served as the entrance to the city from Novgorod.

The most spectacular is the Pokrovskaya Tower, located at the southern edge of the Roundabout City on the embankment of the Velikaya River, not far from the Mirozhsky Monastery. Until then, dilapidated, in the middle of the 20th century the tower was restored, including passages, galleries, stairs and loopholes with deep niches. With a circumference of 90 m, it is the largest fortress tower in Europe. Nearby is the “Batory breach”, made by the artillery of Stefan Batory, who tried to take Pskov in the fall of 1581. It was from him that the additions to the names of the churches standing nearby were formed - “at the Prolom”. A little to the north you can see the Pokrovsky Gates.

On the embankment of Velikaya there is a well-preserved Mstislavskaya tower, formerly called Kislinskaya after the name of the Kislinsky lane that passed here. In the 19th century, the tower was given over to the needs of the telephone exchange, which saved it from destruction. It is closely adjacent to the Soviet-era factory building, which replaced part of the ancient wall, and above it rises ... a factory chimney of the 20th century!

 

Architectural monuments

Middle city

In the XIV century, the city expanded its borders beyond the walls of the Dovmontov city and entered Zastenye, which at that time was limited by the wall of 1375. Later, with the advent of the wall of the Round City in the 16th century, a new Zastenie arose, and the former became known as the Middle City. In ancient times, the territory of the Middle City was distinguished by a high building density: by the end of the 15th century, there were six and a half thousand households on its territory, not counting churches and civil public buildings, and the Roundabout City at that time was mainly planted with gardens and orchards. Today we will not find any borders between the Middle and Roundabout cities, but, inhabited much earlier, the Middle City has given shelter to several interesting Pskov monuments. Among them is the oldest temple on the right bank of the Great - the Church of Michael the Archangel. It is within easy reach of the former courtyard of the Pskov-Pechersky Monastery, where only a heavily rebuilt Hodegetria Church has come down to us from several buildings. In ancient times, Vragovka Street led from the Pechora Compound to the wall of the Middle City. It ran through Usokha (the name meant, according to various versions, the old bed of a dried-up river or a drained swamp), walked past two vanished monasteries and the Church of St. Nicholas from Usokha, and finally approached the wall of the Middle City near the Basil's Church on Gorka.

Church of Michael the Archangel (1339), st. Sovetskaya, 18. Very simple in composition, supplemented in the 17th century with a hipped bell tower, the church was built in 1339 among the first Konchan churches in the oldest part of the city - on Gorodets. Most likely, during construction, the church resembled the one-apse Trinity Cathedral of the 12th century. Despite later alterations, the four-pillar quadrangle with a single apse and western porch remained from the original construction. In ancient times, the church had a mosquito cover, traces of which are visible in the form of semicircles on the facades of the quadrangle. The covering of the western narthex was the same. At the turn of the 14th and 15th centuries, the south chapel appeared near the church, standing symmetrically with respect to the transverse axis of the temple. Most likely, the same chapel was on the north side. In the 17th century, the temple underwent two renovations. After the first of them, apparently capital, in 1613 the altar was consecrated, as evidenced by a memorial plate on the southern wall of the building. In 1694–1695, the present-day drum with a belt was made from polychrome stove tiles, the cupola was covered with tin-plated iron and crowned with a gilded cross. At the same time, the roof covering of the quadrangle was replaced with a simple four-slope roof, and the aisles received single-slope roofs. All these alterations led to the loss of the former proportionality and simplification of the forms of the church. In the 18th-19th centuries, the temple was remodeled several more times. During the restoration in 1948, some of the 19th century strata were removed. Now the church is active. On its porch there is a fresco by a modern icon painter depicting the Archangel Michael.

Basil's Church on Gorka (1413), Oktyabrsky Prospekt, 5. The first church on this site dates back to the 14th century, although only the fact that it was painted in 1377 is known from the chronicle. In 1413, a new church of Basil appeared, which has come down to our time, of course, with significant alterations. The church stands on a small hillock, once surrounded by a swamp, and looks very harmoniously from the Children's Park, from where the clumsy stone bell tower attached in the 18th century with an even later wooden staircase adjoining it is not visible.
At its core, it was a single-domed three-apse temple, characteristic of Pskov, with a quadrangle covered with pozakomar. In the 17th century, the church underwent significant alterations: the galleries were rebuilt, the coverings of the quadrangle and the northern aisle were changed, and, apparently, the southern aisle was broken (whether it was not exactly established). The drum and apses have retained their original appearance and are notable for ornamental belts that appeared in Pskov just at that time. The original slit-like windows were preserved only on the drum and in the side parts of the apses, while the wider central ones were pierced later. In the 18th century, the temple fell into such disrepair that it was scheduled for scrapping and survived only by a lucky chance. The current cupola with a metal coating was entirely made in the 19th century, while its predecessor was covered with glazed scaly tiles of a bright bluish-turquoise color. During the Great Patriotic War, the dome of the northern aisle was destroyed. The original appearance of the church, including the roof coverings, was restored only during a recent restoration.

Church of St. Nicholas on Usokhe (1536) , st. Sovetskaya, 19. Another Konchan temple, the first version of which was built in 1371. The current church appeared on the site of the old temple in 1536 and was very large for its time, second only to the Trinity Cathedral in size. Over the years that have passed since its construction, the church has “grown” into the ground by about two meters, which is clearly visible when entering the building: the floor of the church has remained at the same level. The entrance, by the way, is not located in the usual place, but on the east side, almost in front of the iconostasis.

Like most of the ancient Pskov churches, the church has not escaped alterations. So, in the 17th century, the upper part of the building was washed away by water, and its vaults were overgrown with grass and shrubs. In the course of repairs at the end of the 17th century, the quadrangle lost its eight-slope covering, the coverings of the aisle and porches were changed, and a squat porch was attached to the western porch. In the 80s of the 18th century, a two-span belfry, placed on the northern wall, was broken, and instead of it, a bell tower and a chapel were erected near the southeastern side of the church, hiding a small ancient chapel of the "unquenchable candle" near the southwestern side of the building. Alterations of the 19th century further distorted the appearance of the ancient building, and to top it off, during the years of the Great Patriotic War, the church survived a fire. Restoration of 1946-1974 under the leadership of Yu.P. Spegalsky freed the temple from later layers and almost returned to its original appearance.

Now, as in the old days, it is a three-apse single-domed temple with an eight-slope roof, a preserved northern aisle and a two-bay belfry restored on the northern wall. A small chapel with a small elegant dome and wide openings to the outside still adjoins the southern side apse. From the alterations of the 17th century, only the western porch remained, and the dark green glazed tiles that covered the voluminous onion cupola were lost. The extremely laconic decor of the church is typical for Pskov churches - the processing of the facades with shoulder blades and the belt of the ornament from the depressions on the apses and drums. In the interior of the church, during the restoration, a layer of late plaster was removed and now, admiring the high space under the dome, in the lunettes you can see holes from golosniks - ceramic vessels inserted into the walls to improve acoustics.

Hodegetria Church (1537–1685), st. Profsoyuznaya, 1. The building of the Hodegetria Church that has come down to us is one of the few Pskov churches of the 17th century. It manifested a love for the rich ornamentation and coloring of buildings, characteristic of Rus' in the 17th century and so rare in Pskov. Unfortunately, it is possible to see this only by the power of the imagination in the footsteps of Yu.P. Spegalsky - from the building there was only a stone skeleton devoid of cupolas and decor.

The church was built in 1685 on the site of a 16th century church. In the Great City Panorama of the late 17th-early 18th century, the Hodegetria Church played the role of a strong architectural accent, comparable only to the Trinity Cathedral, which was being built around the same time. It was a five-domed church, rare for Pskov, with a large, placed on four pillars, central dome and small small domes, located, as in the Church of St. Nicholas from Torg, not in the corners, but on the sides of the quadrangle. Chetverik had a twenty-four-slope covering, rare for Pskov, reminiscent of the Novgorod church of Boris and Gleb. Instead of the traditional Pskov belfry, the Hodegetria Church had a bell tower with a high octagonal tent and nine small cupolas set around it, like St. Basil's Cathedral. The domes were covered with glazed tiles and ended with gilded crosses. The walls, drums and the tent of the church were painted with yellow ocher and decorated with belts and large fly with crosses of various shapes laid out of green tiles.

The once cheerful decor of the church played a fatal role in its fate. In 1866, the leadership of the Pskov-Pechora Monastery considered this beauty inappropriate and decided to change its design in the spirit of the new time. It was after this alteration that the church began to be considered uninteresting and poorly preserved. During the Great Patriotic War, the church survived a fire and lost all coverings. And in 1946-1948, thick layers of plaster of 1866 began to fall off, revealing the original forms of the temple. Later, all the plaster of the 19th century was removed and the headless and naked church can now tell the uninitiated viewer only about the use of not only limestone slabs in its construction, but also brickwork, which simplified the implementation of decorative elements.

Here, in the courtyard of the Pskov-Pechora Monastery, there is the Bishop's House - a modest architectural monument of the 19th century.

Church of Peter and Paul from Buy (1540) , st. Karl Marx, 2. The origin of the name from the buoy is not entirely clear. On the one hand, in the old days, burial places were called buoys, but simply churchyards, which also served as burial places, were also called buoys or buoys. Be that as it may, the most common assumption is that the church was built near the ancient burial mounds and therefore received such a name.

The first mention of the Peter and Paul Church is associated with the construction of the wall by posadnik Boris in 1309, when a wall and a stone tower were built next to it. In 1373, the old church was dismantled and moved to another place, and a new one was put in its place. In 1404, a wall was built along the Pskov bank from the Rybnitsa Gates to the Church of Peter and Paul, as a result of which the church ended up in a corner between two walls. The third Peter and Paul Church was erected in 1540 and the remains of this temple, of course, after repeated alterations, have come down to our time. The current version of the temple is the result of scientific restorations of the 20th and 21st centuries.

The history of the alterations of the temple in brief is as follows. By the beginning of the 17th century, after the Livonian War and the subsequent devastation, the temple was pretty dilapidated. In 1610, it was overhauled, covering the walls, vaults, iconostasis, roof and dome with repairs. A century later, a new repair was required, during which the current chapter was made, covered with iron with a relief ornament and crowned with a gilded cross in the spirit of the 17th century. In 1810, two aisles were broken - the southern Znamensky and the northwestern in the name of the Apostle Thomas. Then they demolished the belfry, which stood on the southern wall of the church, and attached a porch to the western vestibule. In the 19th century, a tiled belt with a temple-created inscription was knocked down and plastered. During the restoration of 1962, part of the losses, including the belfry, were restored. At the same time, the church acquired a sixteen-slope covering - now you can’t find such more in Pskov - the existence of which in antiquity has not been reliably established. Later, the porch of the beginning of the 19th century was removed. The last restoration of the building was carried out in the 2000s.

The current appearance of the church is as close as possible to its original appearance. It was a three-apse temple, characteristic of Pskov in the 15th century, with one dome placed on four pillars, and a belfry on the southern wall of the quadrangle. At the western end were arranged two tents with altars, which played the role of small aisles. Two more lost aisles with domes covered with light green ceramic scales were located in the eastern part of the building. The last, fifth, aisle was located on the northwestern side of the church and was also irretrievably lost. The decor of the temple is typical for Pskov. The walls of the quadrangle are treated with spatulas ending in lobed arches, the top of the apses is decorated with a three-row ornament of a runner and a curb, and the central apse is treated with roller patterns. The temple-created inscription has been restored on the drum, and the head is covered with aluminum sheets with embossed ornaments. The interior of the church with its stepped vaults also deserves attention.

There is a legend that during the years of the Great Northern War the church was visited by Tsar Peter I, who lived in the Yamsky chambers located nearby.

Yard of the Rusinovs (mid-17th century), st. Karl Marx, 10. The chambers, which were once the largest civil buildings in the city, were erected by Mikhail Rusinov, the oldest representative of this merchant family. From several stone buildings of the middle of the 17th century, three have survived to this day. Their purpose is not known exactly, but it can be assumed that the two-story building with a porch served as residential chambers, the two-story stone building was used as a storage room, and the one-story building, now used as a garage, was a kitchen. All of them originally had wooden superstructures, and the residential chambers had another stone floor. The lower floor of a residential building served as a warehouse for goods and valuable property stored by merchants in ancient times in the northern part of Krom. Initially, the vaults in the inner part with strippings rested on a square pillar in the center of the chamber. Later, one of the owners of the building, afraid of cracks, reinforced the vaults with four round pillars. The second floor of the chambers was partly used for storage and a vaulted dining room was also located here. On the third floor, which was also made of stone, there was a chamber for entertainment, around which, as a rule, a wooden ambush was arranged. Wooden bedrooms were placed above the wooden ceilings of the third floor, because the people of Pskov refused to live in stone rooms for a long time, considering them unhealthy.

 

Roundabout city

From the north, the Pskova River served as the ancient borders of the Round City, along the banks of which a fortress wall passed, and in other places - a wall that protected the city from the southeast side and from the side of the Velikaya River. Under the high and rocky left bank of the Pskov River, the once wide river washed up several sandy islands, which eventually turned into a flat lowland - Podgorie. Here in ancient times there were mills, baths, leather workshops and small yards of the poorest residents of the town. A high rocky shore hung over Piedmont (in 1465 a wooden fortress wall passed along it), densely built up with stone temples and monasteries. In the 17th century, the place began to be built up with stone industrial buildings.

A little to the east, upstream of the Pskov, it is easy to find the remains of Peter's earthen fortifications (from them you can admire the views of Zapskovye), and behind Gogol Street, near the fortress wall, there is an earthen battery of Peter's, the so-called Lapina Hill. Under the hill is the church of the Nikolsky “from Pesok” monastery, covered by Peter, its walls can be seen through the gap at the western edge of the hill. A little further upstream of Pskov, not far from the intersection of Nekrasov and Vorovsky streets, there are not only the remains of Russian fortifications from the Great Northern War, but also stone chambers of the 17th century covered with earth and monastery churches.

A little to the north, on the banks of the Pskov River, there is Ostrovok, where even before the Great Patriotic War one could see pre-Petrine narrow old streets, cramped courtyards with wooden houses, fences with boarded gates and gates with wrought iron patterned rings. And next to them among the bushes and lawns were the remains of ancient stone buildings. No less picturesque was the Gremyachaya Mountain located opposite Ostrovka with the ruins of ancient buildings and the Gremyachaya Tower. Now this territory has turned into a walking area, but, having lost some of the ancient ruins, it has not lost its charm and is remarkable for its beautiful views.

Fortunately, not only picturesque ruins have come down to us from the buildings of the Round City, which can be revived only by the power of the imagination. Many very remarkable ancient monuments have been preserved. So, to the north of the former Trupekhovskaya Street, now Oktyabrsky Prospekt, there are several civil structures of the 17th century:
Chambers of Yamsky (1680s), st. Vorovskogo, 6. A pair of historical buildings that became famous after Peter I stayed in them at the beginning of the Northern War. Once they were beautiful and rich stone buildings that served as an architectural dominant in their part of the city. During the XVIII-XIX centuries, the chambers changed several owners, and in 1855 the main building survived a fire. It was restored with great distortion, and only deep cellars have been preserved from the original building of the 17th century. The southern facade of the simpler second building of the Chambers remained almost untouched, and on the lower floor you can see a vaulted pantry.

Opposite the chambers of Yamsky once stood the corner tower of the Middle City. A little to the north, near the pedestrian bridge over Pskov, there are the remains of the Church of the Epiphany from Brody, as this place was called in the old days. The church was built in the 16th century on the site of an older one and almost completely covered with earth during the fortification works of 1701. At the request of the owner of the chambers, Nikifor Yamsky, the southern chapel was left from the church, but at the end of the 18th century, he also died.

Guryev Chambers (second half of the 17th century), st. Krasnykh Partizan, 10. The chambers of Thaddeus Guryev were built earlier than the chambers of Yamsky and now represent an abandoned house from the Pskov limestone slab. Since its construction, it has changed several owners: in 1805 it belonged to Trubinsky, and its last owner was de Barani. The house is one-story, on the basement, but from the outside it is the only thing that reminds of its ancient origin. Inside, ancient vaults have been preserved in places. In the courtyard of the house at the beginning of the 20th century, there were remains of a wall from 1375 with one of the towers of the Middle City.

House of Pechenko (second half of the 17th century), st. Gogol, 43. The house is called by the name of the last owner of the beginning of the 20th century, and nothing is known about its former owners. At the beginning of the 20th century, it was used as a transit prison, in Soviet times until 1990 it was a residential building, and now it is an abandoned, slowly but surely deteriorating building. Multiple reconstructions have greatly distorted the original appearance of the ancient Pskov house. The last of them are the repair of 1937 with redevelopment and replacement of the tiled roof with an iron one, and the restoration of 1949–1951 with an imitation of the ancient Pskov style, when the shape and position of the window openings were changed and a new porch was made with antique styling.

The building consists of two buildings of different times, both of the second half of the XVII century. The older part - the former one-story residential chambers - now are ruins in the middle of a picturesque weeds. A younger, once three-story building has survived to our time. As in other Pskov residential chambers, the upper tier of the house was made of wood - its remains have survived to this day. Ancient vaults have been preserved inside the building.

Malting or Lapin's house (XVII century), st. Gogol, 42. Neither the date of construction nor the name of the first owner of the house have been preserved. It is known that in the middle of the 19th century the building was used by the merchant S.D. Voronin for the production of malt, from where one of its names came from. In 1873, the owner of the building was Baron Fitingof, and the last owner of the house was Lapin, from whom in 1914 the building became the property of the Pskov Archaeological Society. Later, the funds of the local history museum were located in Solodezhna.

The building, located in the middle of an overgrown courtyard, has been well preserved, although, apparently, in ancient times it had another, third, stone floor, above which there were almost certainly wooden living quarters. However, the first two floors and the porch have come down to us almost intact. Inside, the chambers have a three-part layout, traditional for Pskov, and all the rooms are covered with ancient vaults. Inside the wall, a staircase leading to the attic or third floor, and even a toilet arranged inside the wall, has been preserved.

Opposite Solodezhna, next to Pechenko's house, near a simple village house (45 Gogol Street), you can see the stone foundation of the hut - the podyzbitsa - of the second half of the 17th century.

Somewhere at the intersection of Nekrasov (former Bolshaya) and Karl Marx (former Petrovskaya) streets in the 16th-17th centuries there was a New Market, which arose on this site in 1510 at the behest of Vasily III instead of the Old Market near the walls of Dovmontov city. To the south, Novy Torg extended to Oktyabrsky Prospekt (Trupekhovka), its western border was the wall of the Sredniy Gorod (now Pushkin Street), from the north it may have reached Spegalsky (Mikhailovskaya) Street, and from the east it was bounded by the wall of the Round City. Two churches have been preserved on the Market:

Church of the Intercession from Torg, st. Karl Marx, 36. The first wooden church of the Intercession was erected to get rid of the great pestilence of 1522, which began just at Novy Torg. The place where the church was erected was swampy, so it had to be built "on rafts". In 1590 it burned down, but after some time it was restored in stone. The exact date of construction of the stone church is unknown, there is only its annalistic mention under 1637 and 1642. Most likely, at the end of the 17th century, the church was rebuilt and this happened, most likely, after the strongest fire of 1676.
Neither the blind drum of the single dome nor the cubic apse of the church has a typical Pskov ornament, although the composition of the temple, traces of an eight-slope roof and decoration of the northern and southern facades with spatulas are typical of Pskov. The building is covered with a thick layer of plaster, under which, perhaps, something more interesting is hidden. Perhaps, the church looks most impressive from the intersection of K. Marx and Nekrasov streets, from the side of the hipped bell tower, extremely rare for Pskov, in the form of an octagon on a quadrangle.

Church of St. Nicholas the Appeared or St. Nicholas from Torg (XVII century), st. Nekrasova, 35. The exact date of construction of the temple that has come down to us is unknown, and among its predecessors there is a mention of the construction of the Church of St. Nicholas in Sands in 1419, but the further fate of this building is unclear. According to the most common version, the current stone church was erected after a fire in 1676 by parishioners of the burnt church of Paraskeva Pyatnitsa to store the icon of St. Nicholas saved from the fire. Another possible date for the construction of the church is 1659. Since 1843, the church passed to the Old Believers, and now it belongs to the Pskov Theological School, which for some reason means a ban on photographing it.

The Church of St. Nicholas ot Torg is one of the very few city churches that appeared in the 17th century, when the efforts of the craftsmen were directed to civil construction, and the churches were only being repaired and remade in the spirit of the new time. The church is the rarest example of a five-domed temple for Pskov, and its four additional domes on thin deaf drums are placed on the sides, and not at the corners of the quadrangle, as was customary everywhere in the country. The original covering of the church was probably eight-slope, and the current simplified version appeared during one of the alterations of the 18th-19th centuries. Now the temple is pillarless, but this was not always the case - during one of the repairs, the foundations of the pillars that once supported the vaults were discovered. The unusual three-tiered belfry near the western wall, apparently, has also come down to us in a modified form: a single-span tier was later built over the older two-span structure. During the alteration of the altar part, the three apses were combined from the outside into one rectangular room, although inside they are still separated by walls with arched openings. The domes of the church, covered with iron in the second half of the 19th century, previously had a roof of green glazed tiles, which successfully combined with a belt of glazed ceramic kokoshniks on the central dome. The lack of ornamentation on the facades of the quadrangle was compensated by small niches, where icons were previously placed. Before the revolution, the iron entrance doors of the church had copper inserts with pictures engraved on them depicting the history of three Christian martyrs - Ananias, Azarias and Misail. Before the Great Patriotic War, these doors were kept in the Pskov Museum, where they are now is unknown.

Between Oktyabrsky Prospekt and Sovetskaya Street are located:
Church of Anastasia the Patterner in Kuznetsy (XVI century), Oktyabrsky Prospekt, 9. According to local legend, the church in the name of Anastasia was first built in 1377 by Vasily Dol, who also built the Vasilyevsky Church, and the dedication of the temple was chosen by the names of his wife and daughter. The chronicle tells about the construction of a votive (to get rid of pestilence) wooden church in 1488 in one day. A year later, a stone church was built on the site of the wooden church. During a great fire in 1539, the vaults of the building collapsed, and after that the church is mentioned in the quitrent books as functioning almost 50 years later. In the 17th century, the galleries were rebuilt, the southern aisle was destroyed and the northern one was rebuilt. In 1819-1827, instead of the belfry and the porch, the porch with stair shoots that has come down to us and a three-tiered bell tower with a spire in the style of classicism were built. At the same time, the eight-slope covering was replaced with a simple four-slope, for which the corners of the facades were cut off. At the end of the 19th century, the dome was replaced with the one that exists now, apparently, at the same time, the belts of the ornament on the drum were cut down and plastered. In the 19th century, the interior was also redesigned in the style of classicism, for which, similarities of Doric capitals were stuck in the upper part of the pillars supporting the vaults. At the end of the 20th - beginning of the 21st century, the church underwent another restoration, during which they tried to return it to its former appearance. Outside, these changes mainly affected the restoration of the traditional Pskov decor on the drum.

In the 16th century, the church was considered one of the most beautiful in Pskov. It was a four-pillared one-domed temple with a main cubic volume and three apses. The building, contrary to Pskov traditions, was symmetrical and had two chapels, galleries ran around the main volume, there was a porch in front of the porch, and entrances to the cellars were symmetrically located from the north and south. Since ancient times, the facades of the quadrangle have been divided by three-part blades, the tops of the apses and the drum are decorated with traditional Pskov three-row ornamental belts of a runner and a curb, and the decor of the middle apse is complemented by roller patterns. From the 17th century, the northern chapel with an elegant cupola and a patterned cross crowning the central chapter of the 19th century have been preserved.

Church of Sergius of Radonezh from Zaluzhye (XVI century), st. Sverdlov, 42 a. The church stands behind a former swamp, called "puddle", hence its name. The church in the name of the Moscow saint, obviously, could appear only after the annexation of the Pskov lands to Rus', i.e. not earlier than the 16th century, but the most probable date for its construction is considered to be the end of the 16th century, when the invasion of the troops of Stefan Batory forced the authorities to move the walled Sergius Monastery to the territory of the Round City. Only one church has come down to us from the monastery, and it is known that in 1642 it was already made of stone. The temple is unusual in its four-pillar construction, which is rarely used for such small structures. Otherwise, it was typical for Pskov churches and was a single-domed cubic volume with three apses and a graceful double-span belfry on the northern wall of the quadrangle. The biography of the church includes the addition of a drum in the second half of the 17th century and the appearance of a ceramic belt over the classical Pskov ornament. Most likely, the famous ceramic dome made of green irrigation plowshare appeared at the same time. Once upon a time, such domes were common for Pskov, but only one scaly ceramic dome survived until the beginning of the 20th century - just on the St. Sergius Church. In 1785, a chapel appeared on the south side of the building, built by the merchant I.Ya. Postnikov. At the beginning of the 20th century, the church was covered with a four-pitched roof, but the original roof was eight-pitched. During the Great Patriotic War, a bomb hit the apses of the church, and in 1947 the drum and dome collapsed. During the work of the 1960s and 1990s, the apses were restored and the eight-slope roof was remade. Now the church is unplastered, its drum and dome are lost.

Church of the New Ascension (1467), st. Nekrasova, 20. Not far from the church of Anastasia in the 15th century stood the Novovoznesensky convent, where in 1467 a stone church appeared. True, the current building most likely dates back to the 16th century, and in the 17th century it underwent noticeable alterations. In 1764, the monastery was abolished, and the Church of the New Ascension became a parish church and was assigned to the Anastasevsky Church. In 1805, they wanted to dismantle the church “because of dilapidation,” but the parishioners stood up for it and petitioned the emperor himself, promising to ensure its existence. They had little money, and by 1888 the church was completely dilapidated, and its roof was overgrown with grass. However, after the miraculous rescue of the emperor's family during a train crash on October 17, 1888, followed by the construction of new churches throughout the country, benefactors were found and it was decided to renew the church. By 1890, a new roof and dome were made and the iconostasis was restored.
In the 16th century, the church had a complex composition of the main cubic volume, two symmetrically located aisles, vestibules and a gallery. The original cover was eight-slope. The old northern tent was previously an aisle. A vestibule adjoins it from the west, and to the left of it, a two-span belfry has been preserved almost intact, remarkable for its precisely adjusted proportions. The lower floor of the belfry was used for pantries and cellars, a staircase made right in the southern wall leads to the upper tier, and along the western staircase you can get into the basement of the belfry covered with a box vault. One of the three original apses was dismantled along with its chapel. Of the several traditional elements of decor, the church retained only the segmentation of the facades with shoulder blades, the rest was lost. Crosses of the 17th century were placed on the cupola of the 19th century and the belfry.

From the south to Novy Torg, on the territory of the ancient Polonishche, there was a place called Romanova Gora. Here, in the immediate vicinity of Torg, the richest residents of the city settled. Therefore, when active stone construction began in Pkov in the 17th century, it was in the Romanikha region that a huge number of new buildings grew, some of which have survived to this day. Among them:

Chambers at the Sokolya Tower (priest's house) (1675-1684), Komsomolsky per., 5. Small two-story chambers were built in the second half of the 17th century near the Sokolya Tower, which was part of the fortifications of the Round City. In ancient times, the current Komsomolsky Lane was called Sokolya Street, and then it reached Velikaya (Soviet) Street. Nothing is known for certain about the first owners of the house, but in the 19th century a priest lived in the house, and then there was a Polish church next to the chambers. Although the building is old, almost nothing has survived from the 17th century. The chambers were rebuilt in the 19th century, some of the windows were expanded, and new ones were pierced on the rear facade, although they tried to give them the old form. After a fire in 1944, the building collapsed and was rebuilt in 1953. Only the lower storage floor and a stone wall porch remained from the ancient building.

Pogankiny Chambers (XVII century) , st. Nekrasova, 7. The most famous and well-preserved monument of Pskov civil architecture. The first owners of the chambers were the merchants Pogankins, but the exact date of their construction is unknown. Based on the methods of their construction, this is the first third of the 17th century; according to another version, they are attributed to the last quarter of the same century. Probably the first owner of the chambers was S.I. Pogankin, one of the richest merchants in the city, entered the living room of the hundred in the 1670s. Despite his high position (or just because of this), he was not loved by the people for abuse of power and, moreover, was accused of smuggling. In 1710, after the death of the last representative of the family, the chambers went to the treasury and were used first as a grocery store, and then as a gunpowder warehouse. By the middle of the 18th century, the chambers were pretty dilapidated and by 1754 they were overhauled, after which they were used as a warehouse until the end of the 19th century. In 1900, the chambers were handed over to the Pskov Archaeological Society, which made another renovation, adapting it to their needs, and after the revolution, the building housed a historical museum with a library. In 1944, the Germans tried to blow up the chambers, but although the northern part of the building was badly damaged, the force of the explosion was not enough to completely destroy the ancient thick walls. In the middle of the 20th century, the chambers were restored and are now used as a museum.

The building was built from a local limestone slab and consists of three volumes, set with the letter P - a three-story western, two-story southern and one-story eastern wing. The facades of the building do not have divisions, except for drainpipes, small windows with different shapes of openings differ in irregular arrangement and different sizes, in accordance not with the appearance of the facades, but with the functions of the interior.
In the courtyard of the chambers near the western wing, you can see an antique-style stone porch, the former one was broken back in the 18th century. Inside, vaulted ceilings, intra-wall staircases and other wonders inherent in the architecture of the 17th century have been preserved. Residential were the upper wooden floors of a three-story and more modest two-story houses, connected by a passage. The east wing housed the kitchens. The lower floors and cellars had no heating and served as warehouses, while the second and third floors of the chambers were heated by stoves.

The first and second chambers of the Menshikovs (XVII century), st. Sovetskaya, 50. Two buildings adjoining each other: a three-story eastern one - the first chambers, a one-story western one - the second ones. They were built at the end of the 17th century and their first owners were the merchants Menshikovs. At the beginning of the 18th century, the merchant family became impoverished, and in the 18th century the second chambers were empty. Later, the chambers had many owners, which is why they are known by different names. Now they are sometimes called by the names of the last pre-revolutionary owners: the first chambers are the first house of Sutotsky, and the second ones are the house of Yakovlev. Until the 19th century, the chambers came in their original form, although they were pretty dilapidated. Later they were rebuilt, and in 1940 the basements of the buildings were adapted for a bomb shelter.

The first chambers are well preserved, the facade of the stone part of the building remained intact, although the porch and the mound adjoining it were lost. The first two floors of the chambers were used as warehouses. On the third floor, instead of the traditional trough (a place for a feast), there were two chambers for receiving guests with a vestibule between them. From the entrance there was an exit to a wooden ambush, and even higher there were two wooden residential floors.

During the years of existence, the second chambers have lost the third stone floor, and their lower floors have been rather heavily altered. But on the other hand, unlike other Pskov civil buildings of the 17th century, they have an external ornament in the form of architraves, reminiscent of the decor common at that time outside of Pskov, although with local flavor. The porch was restored during the restoration of the XX century.

Fourth Chambers of the Menshikovs (Second House of Sutotsky), st. Soviet, 50 a. The house is located to the east of the first Menshikov chambers, on the other side of their main facade. The house was significantly rebuilt, its appearance was significantly distorted. Now the building is uninhabited and is almost in ruins.

Third chambers of the Menshikovs, st. Nekrasova, 10 a. The house is located to the east of the fourth chambers and since the 19th century it has acquired another name - the house of Marina Mnishek, who, according to local legend, stayed here for three days at the beginning of the 17th century. This legend has nothing to do with real historical events, in fact, the house itself appeared no earlier than the 1670s. But, perhaps, this name has something to do with the promise of False Dmitry to give the Pskov lands to his bride, Marina Mnishek. The house is connected by underground passages with other chambers of the Menshikovs and, very likely, was built almost simultaneously with them. Now the building is not used and has an unsightly appearance.

Chambers on Romanova Gora (House of the leader of the nobility), st. Soviet, 52a. The now mothballed building was built in the last quarter of the 17th century and rebuilt in the 19th century by the provincial architect Franz Jabs. The only thing left in the building from the Pskov architectural tradition is a porch with characteristic massive pillars. Back in the middle of the 20th century, the chambers were inhabited - they housed a court, and then a conservatory.

Chambers of Podznoev (XVII), st. Nekrasov, 1.3. The history of the construction of three buildings in an old residential courtyard and the name of their first owners are unknown. Already from the beginning of the 18th century, the chambers remained escheated, and at the end of the same century the courtyard was bought by the merchant Podznoev, whose descendants owned it in the 19th century. Actually, by the 19th century, the chambers were heavily rebuilt, although their cellars retained their original appearance. One of the buildings turned into ruins, the other two were dilapidated until the middle of the 20th century. The peculiarities of the structure of the buildings made it possible to date Podznoev's chambers to the 17th century. In 2009, the two surviving buildings were restored and are now used as a hotel and restaurant complex. Judging by the photographs, the restorers have preserved some of the interiors of the lower floor, including the vaulted ceilings.

Church of the Old Ascension (XVI century), st. Soviet, 64 a. The Starovoznesensky Monastery has been known since the 14th century. The first mention of the Church of the Ascension dates back to 1420. Before the construction of the wooden wall of the Roundabout City in 1465, the church stood in the suburbs and even then was called old. The stone Old Ascension Church was founded in 1467, but the building that has come down to us, which had a two-span belfry and two aisles, southern and northern, was built in the second half of the 16th century. In 1833, the southern chapel in the name of the Nativity of the Virgin was dismantled due to dilapidation, and a church of the same name appeared nearby - a curious monument of Russian provincial architecture of the 19th century.
In the 19th century, the Ascension Church was repeatedly remodeled, which led to the loss of ancient forms. In the middle of the 19th century, a four-tiered bell tower was built behind the altar of the Nativity Church, from which only the first tier has come down to us. Having survived many more alterations later, during the Great Patriotic War, the church lost the upper part of the drum and the dome. At present, after careful research by the restorers, the church has been restored in its ancient forms.
The church is in all respects a typical Pskov temple. A three-part apse, decorated with belts of a runner and a curb, adjoins a four-pillared quadrangle worked with shoulder blades, and its middle part is also with roller stains. The church has an eight-slope roof, a drum decorated with traditional ornaments and an onion dome covered with a wooden plowshare. The walls of the symmetrically placed aisles do not have decor, on the narthex along the axis of the building there is a restored three-span belfry, and an ancient porch is placed in front of the porch. The cross was made in the 1960s based on samples from the 15th-16th centuries.

To the west of Sovetskaya Street are located:
Church of the Assumption from Polonishche (1811), st. Georgievskaya, 3a. This is a rare church in Pskov in the style of provincial classicism. Placed near the location of the ancient Assumption Church in 1811 at the expense of A.L. Shishkova, grandmother of the Decembrist M.A. Nazimova. The old Assumption Church, known since 1417, by the beginning of the 19th century, was completely dilapidated and was dismantled. The current color scheme (a combination of white and light blue) was adopted behind the church in 1864. In 1876, a wooden one-story house of the clergy was built next to the temple (it did not reach us), and in 1909 a brick house of the clergy was also built a little to the east of the church - it has survived to this day. In 1936, the church was closed and until 1948, apparently, was not used in any way. Then it was adapted to store the funds of the State Archives of the Pskov Region.

The new church is made of brick and has a symmetrical axial composition. Four-column porticos of the Doric order with triangular pediments adjoin the quadrilateral square in plan with rounded corners on three sides. The east façade has a similar portico, but its columns are set against the wall. The light drum ends with a dome with a small deaf drum topped with a cross. To the south of the building is a slender three-tiered bell tower with a spire.

The building of the former Pskov male gymnasium (late 19th–early 20th century), st. Kalinina, 5. A historical monument, where, according to many memorial plaques on the building, several famous people from Pskov studied, including Soviet writers V.A. Kaverin and Yu.N. Tynyanov and biologist L.A. Zilber.

Church of Joachim and Anna (XVI century), st. Kalinina, 26. The date of construction of the temple is unknown, but the features of the architecture make it possible to attribute it to the 16th century. The Yakiman convent, to which the temple belonged, was already known in the 1310s. The church itself was first mentioned in 1544 on the occasion of a fire experienced by the monastery. At the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th century, the monastery was abolished. At the end of the 19th century, the church underwent significant alterations, which noticeably distorted its appearance. So, by the beginning of the 20th century, it had a simple four-pitched roof, two drums stacked on top of each other and a small onion dome. At the porch, as was customary in Pskov in the 19th century, side openings were laid. In the middle of the 20th century, the temple was restored, if possible, returning it to its original appearance.

The church is typical for its time and consists of a four-column roof covered with a restored eight-slope roof, a southern chapel and a northern extension without an altar. In the center of the narthex there is a two-span belfry, in front of the narthex there is a porch, made in traditional forms for Pskov. Three semicircular apses adjoin the altar part of the church. Their generally traditional decor has one unique feature: in the runner decorating the eaves of the apses, the bricks are slightly hewn to the outer ends of the ribs, so that the depressions converge in depth and widen on the surface. The church is crowned with a drum with an onion dome and a cross.

Church of the Intercession and Nativity of the Virgin from Prolom (XVI century) , st. Sverdlova, 1. The unusual double Church of the Nativity and Intercession in the Corner is located on the territory of the former Intercession Monastery, in the very corner of the fortress, next to the Intercession Tower and attracts the attention of tourists not only with its unusual composition, but also with its close proximity to the fortress walls and to the Intercession Tower . At first, there was a single temple of the Intercession, but in 1544 the monastery burned down. According to one version, soon after the fire, the southern Church of the Intercession was restored, and the second temple appeared next to the Intercession Church after the lifting of the Polish siege of 1581–1582. He had a dedication in the name of the Nativity of the Virgin, which coincided with the day of the failed Polish assault. Another version, confirmed by the presence of a common load-bearing wall, claims that both temples appeared at the same time, immediately after the siege of Stefan Batory.

The current view of the church is a product of the restoration of 1961-1964, made according to the surviving remains of the church and the images of the church on ancient icons. During the restoration, the vaults of the northern building, both domes and the belfry were restored.

The temple consists of two fused, crowdless, single-apse churches, each with its own narthex, but with a common two-span belfry, set along the axis of the building. The facades are devoid of any decor, the apses and the drum are decorated with a variety of the Pskov runner. Both quarters are covered with a gable roof.

Church of St. George from Vzvoz (1494) , Georgievskaya street, 1. The church stands on the banks of the Great, next to St. George's vzvoz, as they called specially arranged rises from the river to the shore in Pskov. Nearby, closer to the river, there are the remains of an earthen battery, sprinkled by Peter I to the fortress wall. Church of St. George with Vzvozu is one of the few built in the 14th century, although at the very end of it. However, the composition of the building was close to the parish churches of the XVI century.

Now the church is a traditional four-column quadrangle with three apses. Aisles and galleries common for temples of this type were broken in the first third of the 19th century when trying to put in order a fairly dilapidated structure. The height of the former southern aisle can be easily estimated by the level of processing of the quarter with blades. During the same repair of the 19th century, the ancient belfry, which stood on the southern wall of the quadrangle, was also broken. When the four-slope coating appeared, history is silent. The porch at the western narthex was added in the 17th century, and the two-span belfry above the porch was created in 1831. In addition to the traditional ornament, the wailing church drum has a rare belt of green glazed tiles of the 15th century. The famous Pskov ornament on the apses is plastered.

Church of the Mid-Pentecost, st. Children's, 3. The church is located on the former courtyard of the suburban Spaso-Eliazarovsky monastery. The exact date of its construction is unknown. The chronicle indicates the year 1494, but most likely it was the predecessor of the current church, which is usually dated to the 17th century. At least in 1694, it definitely existed, as evidenced by a stone slab with an inscription about the burial of Hieromonk Abbot Varlaam. The church was heavily rebuilt in the 19th century (the vaults of the quadrangle and the belfry “suffered the most”), and as a result of the alteration, it turned into a completely unique monument for Pskov.

This one-domed temple has a simple composition of a cubic columnless quadrangle, one apse and a refectory with a belfry on pillars. The smooth northern facade suggests the existence of a northern aisle or porch in former times. The roofing, as was often the case with Pskov churches, was at some point replaced by a simple hipped roof. A completely unique open porch set on pillars. In the 19th century, pillars were attached to the two-span belfry above the porch, thus arranging an unusual hipped bell tower.

Chamber in the courtyard of the Eleazarovsky Monastery (XVI century), st. Children's, 1b. Next to the Church of Mid-Pentecost there is a two-story building of the pastor's cells of the former courtyard of the Spaso-Eliazarovsky Monastery. The lower stone part of the building, presumably, dates from the 16th century, while the upper wooden part was made after 1945.

 

Zapskovye

You can get to Zapskovye from the central part of the city either along the Sovetsky bridge leading from Krom to Staroy Primost, or along the newly built pedestrian bridge near Brody, leading from Krasnye Partizan Street to the Church of the Epiphany. Zapskovye has always been simpler and more monotonous than the interfluve part of the city. There was no Market in it, and rich merchants did not build here until the second half of the 17th century. The area was distinguished by a low building density, including the courtyards of small and medium-sized townspeople, a dozen parish churches and several freely spread out monasteries. The main streets of the district were Zvanitsa (now Leon Pozemsky) and Bolshaya Zapskovskaya (now Herzen and Verkhne-Beregovaya streets). It was around them until the 17th century that parish churches and monasteries were concentrated, and later Pskov rich people began to build.

Church of Cosmas and Damian from Primost (1463), st. Leon Pozemsky, 7. The first mention of the church is in 1458 on the occasion of the fire that destroyed it. A new stone building was built in 1463, but during the fire of 1507, the church was badly damaged by the explosion of gunpowder stored in the southwestern aisle. The church played an important role in the life of the city and therefore was quickly restored after this incident. At the same time, its original sixteen-slope roof was simplified to eight-slope, new aisles were made and the cupola was restored. A separate building was now erected to store gunpowder. Its lower massive part was used as a warehouse, and a large four-span belfry was placed on top. Under the belfry, in the upper tier of a cubic volume, in the 16th century, a unique small church was built. From it, vaults resting on two pillars, as well as doors, niches and windows, have come down to us unchanged. In the 18th century, the belfry was broken, and on the same massive base they piled up an octagonal bell tower typical of its time. It was destroyed during the Great Patriotic War, but the foundation of the belfry still stands not far from the church, inside the church fence. The porch, added to the original west porch in the 17th century, was later remade. On the other hand, the rarest example of a 17th-century fence has been preserved, although not in its original form. In other respects, the church is a traditional Pskov temple in the form of a one-domed quadrangle with a three-part segmentation of the facades with shoulder blades and a typical Pskov ornament on the apses and the drum. The dome of the church ends with a beautiful gilded cross of the 17th century with an openwork apple.

Church of Elijah Wet (1677), st. Volkova, 9. A rare representative of the Pskov churches of the 17th century, built in 1677 on the territory of the ancient Ilyinsky Monastery, located in the swampy part of the Zapskovye, for which he received the name “Ilya Wet” among the people. Despite its later origin, in terms of composition and construction methods, the church is closer to the monastic churches of the Pskov school of the 14th-16th centuries. The building has come down to us with minor alterations, in particular, the current hemispherical dome has replaced the original onion dome.

The composition of the building includes a four-column one-apse quadrangle with an under-church, which is adjoined by the northern chapel and the southern gallery placed on basements. Along the axis of the temple there is a belfry topped with a spire of the octagonal type on a quadrangle and a simple porch. The porches with large open openings adjoin the bell tower on both sides. The tapered drum, a sign of the 17th century, is decorated with traditional geometric patterns.

Chambers Trubinsky, st. Leon Pozemsky, 20 and 22. Two buildings of the chambers were built at the end of the 17th century by order of the wealthy merchant Ivan Trubinsky, whose descendants owned the houses until the middle of the 19th century. Since the end of the 18th century, the owners began to rent out houses. At first, they housed a bank office, and since 1829, a city hospital. At the beginning of the 20th century, Agapov's tobacco factory was located in the buildings, and shortly before the revolution, they were transferred to the process engineer G.Yu. Meyer, who built the famous Art Nouveau house nearby. Meyer adapted the houses of the Trubinskys as a flax warehouse, and the buildings remained the warehouse after the revolution. The chambers were badly damaged during the Great Patriotic War.

Now it is a pair of inconspicuous two-story buildings, distinguished by the absence of windows on the first floor and deep window openings on the second. The first chambers (house number 20) have an L-shaped plan and, together with the second house, form an inner courtyard, to which stone front porches used to lead. The yard can be seen from behind the old stone fence, preserved between the houses from the side of Leon Pozemsky Street. Having lost their former beauty, the houses are nevertheless of interest to researchers of ancient Pskov civil architecture. According to the Pskov tradition, the chambers had upper wooden floors with a mound near the western facade and were covered with red unglazed Dutch tiles, fragments of which were found in the original masonry of the building. The interior decoration of the chambers has not been preserved.

Meyer's former home (circa 1901), st. Leon Pozemsky, 22 a. The only building in the city in the Art Nouveau style was intended to house the administration of the rope factory, founded by the German process engineer G.Yu. Meyer. At the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, Meyer was well known in the city. Starting with the construction of a steam mill, he then opened a technical office for the purchase of production machines and the sale of cement and phosphate fertilizers. Having become rich, he acquired some real estate and opened his own rope factory in 1896, having purchased the necessary equipment in England. After the fire of 1900, Meyer quickly built new buildings and it was at this time that a two-story office building in the Art Nouveau style appeared, adjacent to the second chambers of the Trubinskys. During its century-old history, the building has not changed much.

Chambers of the Postnikovs (XVII century), st. Oleg Koshevoy, 2 and 2 b. The first owners of the chambers were the wealthy Pskov merchants Postnikovs, who apparently built the building at the end of the 17th century. It seems that the Postnikovs owned the building in the 18th century. In any case, one of the Postnikovs sold the chambers in 1784 to a bank office. However, popular rumor says that already from the beginning of the 18th century there was a government building in the chambers and a prison with it, which gave the building the nickname "Sack". By the way, the street on which the building stands was called Meshkovskaya until 1949, and then it was named after Oleg Koshevoy. From 1784 to 1788, Nikolai Petrovich Rezanov, one of the founders of the Russian-American Company, served in the Pskov Chamber of the Civil Court with the rank of collegiate assessor, well known to his contemporaries thanks to the rock opera by A. Rybnikov based on the verses by A. Voznesensky "Juno and Avos" and the production of the same name Theater of the Lenin Komsomol. Rezanov was often and for a long time seconded to a bank office, which was at that time in the Postnikovs' chambers.
In the 1840s, the chambers underwent a major renovation and little has been rebuilt since. Until 1944, between the main massive two-story building and a one-story outbuilding standing parallel to it, there was a gate that opened the entrance to the courtyard. Now the main building houses the central library of the Pskov region, which allows you to see its internal structure, where the ancient vaults should be preserved. The outbuilding appears to have undergone less alteration, apart from the loss of the upper timber floor in an 1840s rebuild.

Church of the Resurrection from the Stadium (XVI century), st. Nabat, 4a. At least since 1458, there was a nunnery on Stadishche, which was the name of the place around the current church, which was abolished in 1765. The first mention of the church dates back to 1532, but it is unlikely that the age of the building that has come down to us should be counted from this date: the unfinished stone Church of the Resurrection was mentioned in connection with a strong fire in Zapskovye. Apparently, from the 16th century, the walls of the four-pillar quadrangle and three semicircular apses have come down to us. All other parts of the church appeared later. The southern chapel, the narthex, the porch and the northern gallery belong to the end of the 17th century. At the same time, instead of a free-standing wooden belfry, a two-span belfry appeared above the porch, similar to the belfry of the church of Sergius from Zaluzhya. The third bay, which differs in shape, near the left edge of the belfry, appeared only at the end of the 19th century. Except for the unusual design of the southern limit in the form of two hanging arches, the decor of the church is traditional for Pskov architecture. The facades of the quadrangle are divided by three-part shoulder blades, three apses of the church are decorated with a characteristic Pskov ornament, and the central one is also decorated with roller patterns. The fourth apse belonging to the chapel was left without decor. The drum is decorated with a cornice in the form of an arched belt, and under it is a decorative belt of two curbs with a runner in the middle. The current eight-slope covering of the chevterik is the result of restoration at the beginning of the 21st century.

Church of Varlaam Khutynsky (1495), st. Leon Pozemsky, 53. The church stands right next to the fortress wall, next to the dilapidated Varlaam tower, which once towered over the Varlaam gates. The first church in the name of the Novgorod saint Varlaam Khutynsky was a votive one. The wooden temple was erected in 1466 in one day to get rid of the Varlaam pestilence that mowed down the people (most likely it was a plague). In 1495, instead of a wooden one, a stone church was erected, which inscribed its own heroic page in the military history of the city. In 1615, the Swedish king Gustav Adolf tried to take the Pskov fortress from the side of the Varlaam Gates, which fell under heavy bombardment. The Swedes managed to destroy the Varlaam tower, but they came under fierce fire coming from the church dome of the Varlaam church, and were forced to retreat.

The Varlaam Church is quite a typical Pskov temple, although it has a design feature that was obsolete by the end of the 15th century in the form of a cross-domed ceiling system with lowered girth arches. What caused the introduction of this element - scientists argue, and our business is only to mention this oddity. The temple is a composition of a four-pillar quadrangle with one apse. From the very beginning, the church had a northern gallery and a southern aisle, but they were rebuilt several times, the last time in 1875. The porch is also a product of the 19th century. But the three-part vestibule with wide arched openings and the two-span belfry standing on it were built simultaneously with the quadrangle. The roof and drum of the church were remade in the 17th century, and in addition to the traditional Pskov belts, two rows of green tiles appeared on the drum, later plastered and then restored during the restoration of the 20th century. It is not known when the original eight-pitched roof was replaced by a simplified four-pitched roof. The decor of the church with its three-part division of facades and corbels on the apse and drum is quite common for Pskov. The facades of the southern aisle of the 19th century are made in the spirit of eclecticism: paired windows with semicircular endings, architraves of complex configuration, rustication, etc.

Church of the Icon Not Made by Hands from Zhabya Lavitsa (presumably, the 16th century) , st. Pervomaiskaya, 26 (the house number is 27 on the maps, but on the address plate on the church - 26). Lavitsa in Pskov since ancient times was called bridges for crossing swampy places. In one of these places, on Zhabya Lavitsa, in 1487 a wooden votive church in the name of the Image Not Made by Hands was erected in a day. When it was replaced with a stone one, no one knows. The most ancient parts of the extant structure - the narthex, the porch, the belfry and the southern aisle - date back to the end of the 17th century. In 1852, the church was going to be dismantled and even partially carried out this intention. But in 1857 it was restored.

The church has a very picturesque composition of several simple volumes. From the east, a massive semi-cylindrical apse adjoins the cubic pillarless quadrangle. On the western side there is a porch and a porch covered with two slopes, and above the western wall of the southern aisle there is a two-span belfry with a gable roof, which gives a special zest to the whole composition. In front of the church there is a gate, decorated, like the porch, with flutes that came into fashion only in the 17th century. On both sides of the gate there are fragments of a fence that is missing from the other sides.
The chetverik has a flat wooden ceiling, on which a decorative drum with an onion dome rests. The decor of the facades is modest: from the former three-part articulation of the northern and southern facades with blades, only two blades remained, and even those were pretty cut off by later rounded window openings. The southern aisle of the church with its rectangular apse and the luminary located above it - its slit-like window openings, untouched by time, deserve special attention - the best preserved. It is covered with a box vault and crowned with a decorative drum with a small bulbous dome. The most remarkable thing in the chapel is the ceramic floor of the 17th century, preserved in its eastern part. Nothing like it could be found in Pskov. True, it is apparently impossible to see it: during the reconstruction, the floor was covered with a layer of sand and covered with wooden flooring. But, according to rumors, it was laid out of ceramic tiles that had the shape of squares, rhombuses, parallelograms and narrow rectangles and had a color range from yellow to dark brown.

Church of Cosmas and Damian from Gremyachaya Gora (1540), st. Gremyachaya, 7. The church stands in one of the most picturesque places in Pskov, on Gremyachaya Mountain, the foot of which was chosen by city blacksmiths back in the 14th century. The first stone church in the name of the patrons of the blacksmiths, Saints Cosmas and Damian, is mentioned in the annals under 1383. At the same time, the Kozmodemyansky (Gremyatsky) monastery was founded, which existed until 1764. In 1540, a new stone church was erected, from which only the walls of the quadrangle and three semicircular apses with ancient geometric ornaments preserved on them have survived. Like other Pskov churches of the 16th century, the building was originally surrounded on three sides by galleries or side chapels, and there was a belfry on the south wall of the quadrangle. In the 17th century, the church underwent significant alterations: almost everything was broken, including galleries, vestibules, the western pair of pillars, vaults, the dome and the belfry. On the western side, a small vestibule, which has come down to us, was erected, as well as a porch and a bell tower that had already died in the 20th century. At the same time, the eight-slope roof was replaced by a four-slope roof, on top of which a dense decorative drum with a small onion dome was placed.

The building of the tannery, st. Rattlesnake. Going down the path lost in the grass from the Gremyachaya Mountain to Pskov, we will find ourselves in a place known since ancient times as the Wolf Pits, where a century ago there was an entrance to an underground gallery - either a hiding place, or an underground passage to the Gremyachy tower. Two buildings of the 17th century have been preserved here - a one-story stone building, which was once a tannery, and the ruins of Yakov Syrnikov's chambers. In the 19th century, the barracks of the Yenisei regiment were located nearby and the one-story building was used as a bakery, and the officer corps was located in the chambers. The factory building has been partially restored and mothballed. In the lower part of the southern, eastern and western facades, fragments of ancient masonry have been preserved. Inside, three interior rooms have been restored, where you can admire the ancient vaults.

Church of the Epiphany from Zapskovye (1496) , st. Herzen, 7. One of the most beautiful churches in Pskov, it is also known under the name "at Brody", which comes from its location at the former crossing over Pskov. Picturesquely located on a high green hill on the banks of the Pskov River, the church has a composition typical of ancient Pskov churches consisting of many volumes - a four-column quadrangle with three adjoining apses, galleries and two aisles, each with its own apse. Their symmetrical arrangement is skillfully disguised by a four-span belfry attached from the northwestern edge on a massive base. The belfry is remarkable not only for its size, but also for the non-rhythmic width of the spans, matched to the size of the bells.

The history of alterations of the church is as follows. Built at the end of the 15th century, at the end of the 17th century, the eight-slope roof was simplified to four-slope. At the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries, the shape of the dome was changed, a buttress that has survived to this day was attached to the belfry from the west, the southern aisle was rebuilt, and the head and drum of the north were changed. During the Great Patriotic War, the wooden parts of the building were destroyed by fire. After the war, restoration was carried out twice - in the middle of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century. During the latter, the shape of the central dome was again changed and both aisles were recreated.

 

Zavelichie

Mass residential development on the left bank of the Great River appeared only in the 14th century, although archaeologists discover earlier buildings around the ancient roads. But in Zavelichye there have always been many monasteries: in addition to the Mirozhsky and Ivanovsky monasteries that have come down to us, there were seven more. Poorly protected, Zavelichye was often subjected to almost complete destruction and not so much has come down to us from its ancient buildings: archaeological sites, one complete monastic ensemble and several churches - almost all of this is located along the Velikaya coast. Otherwise, Zavelichye, where multi-storey construction is allowed, differs little from any modern city in Russia.

The Mirozhsky Monastery is located on the spit of the Mirozha and Velikaya rivers, almost opposite the Pokrovskaya Tower. First mentioned in 1156, it was founded, apparently, a little earlier by the Novgorod bishop Nifont. Despite the vulnerable location, the Mirozh Monastery never had fortifications and its territory was usually surrounded only by a low wooden fence, and a tyn from the west. The current low stone fence was made in 1799-1805. It happened that the monastery fell into the hands of enemies or served as a quarter for the Moscow rati. During the siege of Stafan Batory, cannons were dragged into the monastery bell tower, from which they fired red-hot cannonballs at the city. In a word, the monastery was not very suitable for a contemplative monastic life.

The most ancient building of the monastery, and of all Pskov, is the Transfiguration Cathedral, world-famous thanks to the unique frescoes of the 12th century preserved in it, stylistically close to Byzantine examples. The exact dates of the construction of the cathedral are unknown, but all sources agree that it appeared in the middle of the 12th century through the efforts of Archbishop Nifont, a Greek by birth. It is believed that the cathedral was built by an artel of Novgorodians who came along with Nifont, but due to the peculiarities of the internal structure, it is believed that Byzantine craftsmen were among the builders. By the way, the only decorative decoration of the cathedral in the form of an arched frieze on the drum can be considered greetings from the Novgorodians.

The design of the cathedral changed as it was built. It began as a square cross-domed temple with a clearly identified cruciform structure. It was achieved by lowering the corner volumes in the western part and using unevenly high apses in the eastern part of the building. However, already in the course of construction, the low western compartments were built up to the level of the central vault, although the internal cross-domed composition, unique in its structure in Rus', remained unchanged. In it, the supports for the unusually spacious dome and wide drum are not pillars, but walls cut through by arches. The additional volume of the dome was gained by reducing the thickness of the walls of the drum, and along the way, the weight of the entire upper part of the structure also decreased. Due to the lack of dedicated verticals, the interior of the church looks extremely solid and monolithic. And the frescoes covering the dome, drum and other internal surfaces of the cathedral only enhance this effect.

Later, in the 16th century, a porch with a traditional Pskov belfry appeared near the western façade; Over the past centuries, the height of the soil around the church has grown by 2 meters, from which its proportions have become squat. All this led to the fact that the only angle from which the church even remotely resembles the original temple of the XII century is the view from the east, from the side of the river.

The frescoes of the Transfiguration Cathedral belong to the Byzantine school. Their history is full of bitter losses. The original painting appeared already during the construction of the temple. In the 17th century, like many monuments of Russian monumental painting, the frescoes were whitewashed and opened only at the end of the 19th century. But, as usual, someone did not like their shabby appearance and in 1902 they were rewritten "in the Old Russian style", fortunately, with the preservation of the iconography of the plots. Only in the 1920s did the re-opening of the thoroughly damaged frescoes begin, but even now about half of the ancient painting is under a layer of renovations from 1902. Among the authentic frescoes cleared are images of the Annunciation, the Nativity, the Assumption of the Mother of God (with the exception of the lower part) and the Entombment.

The frescoes are often closed for viewing due to inclement weather, but there is usually an exception for tour groups and you can usually join them. As of the summer of 2013, the Transfiguration Cathedral is closed for restoration and it is impossible to enter inside.

Another monument is located in the northern part of the monastery Stefan's Gate Church. In the 18th century, a fraternal building was built near the church, and in the 1870s, a bell tower was built into the gap between the church and the cells. All this uneven composition with elements of Pskov medieval architecture, Naryshkin baroque, classicism and neoclassicism formed a new “splendid facade” of the monastery, blocking the view of the Transfiguration Cathedral.

The current Stefan's Church, together with the gate, was built at the end of the 17th century on the site of an older building from 1546, which, in turn, replaced an even older church from 1404. The former wooden gates stood to the west of the church, and above them stood the wooden St. Nicholas Church, which disappeared in the 18th century. To the west, there were wooden rectory chambers, which were considered the decoration of the monastery.

Mirozhsky arboretum. It is located next to the Mirozhsky monastery. The park was established in 1966 and contains several rare species of trees and shrubs. In 2013, they decided to improve the park and, apparently, the work has not yet been completed.

Church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin in Butyrki (1773-1777), Olginskaya (Krasnoarmeyskaya) embankment, 47. A rare church for Pskov of the late 18th century with a traditional three-dimensional composition and decoration in the spirit of the provincial baroque. It was built in the former Streltsy Sloboda on the left bank of the Mirozhka River. The church was erected at the expense of the Don and Sebezh Cossacks and consists of several volumes: a crowdless cubic quadrangle, a vestibule and a three-tiered octagonal bell tower crowned with a spire. The only apse has an unusual five-sided shape.

Church of Alexander Nevsky (1908), st. Mirnaya, 1. The regimental church of the Omsk regiment based in Pskov was built in the "Russian style" according to the standard design of military churches. In total, there were several dozen such churches in the Russian Empire. Despite the "standard project", the temple in the style of late eclecticism is absolutely unique for Pskov.

Church of Pope Clement XVI (XVI century), Krasnoarmeiskaya (or Olginskaya) Embankment, 16. Standing on the steep bank of the Great, the Church of Clement is the only thing left of the Clement Monastery, devastated by the Swedes and subsequently closed. The church, in general, is typical of the Pskov church architecture of the 16th century, although it differs in some details. The four-pillar quadrangle is placed on an unusually high sub-church, three apses adjoin it, and on the south side there is an 18th-century chapel with a small decorative cupola. Another feature of the church is the lack of galleries. The once eight-slope covering in the lost past was remade into a four-slope, as evidenced by the decor of the facades cut off from above. Over the years of its life, the church lost its vestibule, porch and belfry. The shape of the dome is also changed; it is crowned with a 17th-century cross with a small spherical dome under it. The semicircular apses of different heights, like the drum, are decorated with traditional curb and runner belts, while the decor of the higher middle apse is complemented by roll patterns. Inside the church is well preserved, but the ancient interior decoration is lost.

Church of St. Nicholas from the Stone Fence (XV-XVI century)  Wikidata element, st. Roza Luxembourg, 17. The only surviving building of the Nikolsky Kamennogradsky Monastery, which stood on the old Izborskaya road already in the XIV-XV centuries. Although the first mention of the church dates back to 1481, the date of construction of the current building is unknown. According to the features of its appearance, it is believed that it appeared no later than the 16th century. During the Livonian War of 1581–1583, the church was destroyed. A century later, in 1698, it was restored at the private expense of Vasily Kolyagin, a townsman.

The church has a composition, relatively rare for Pskov, of a columnless quadrangle with a single semicircular apse adjoining it. In the 19th century, a new wooden one was added to the west instead of the old stone narthex. In ancient times, the church had a belfry, which was later replaced by a wooden bell tower, which stood until the 1830s. In the 19th century, the eight-pitched plank covering was replaced with a metal four-pitched roof, at the same time the window openings of the northern and southern walls were hewn. Ancient slit openings in the apse were laid, but they were preserved on the drum. The cupola was originally wooden, upholstered with scales, and the current metal coating, apparently, appeared along with the alteration of the roof. Under the quadrangle and the vestibule there is an under-church covered with box vaults, which you can go down from the north-east side of the apse. The decor of the church is simple - the segmentation of the facades of the quadrangle with shoulder blades, and an extremely modest belt on the drum made of curb and runner.

Chapel of Anastasia the Roman (1911) , Rizhskaya st. (on the right at the Olginsky bridge, if you stand facing the river). The first Anastasievskaya chapel on the left bank of the Great River was mentioned in 1710. Then, to save from the epidemic, a votive wooden chapel was erected - they were usually built on the same day. The stone chapel, which soon replaced the wooden one, stood until the beginning of the 20th century, when it was decided to build a permanent bridge across the Velikaya - until then, every spring-summer season began with the construction of a pontoon bridge. During construction, the left end of the bridge had to be raised, for which an embankment was made on the shore. It was impossible to save the chapel, so the old one was demolished, and an embankment was made above the foundation to the level of the bridge, where they put a new chapel, designed by A.V. Shchusev in Art Nouveau style with stylization of Pskov medieval architecture. In October 1911, the chapel was consecrated, and in 1913 it was painted by G. Chirikov based on sketches by N.K. Roerich, two of which are kept in the Russian Museum.

Under Soviet power, the "life" of the chapel did not work out. It was closed in 1924 and they tried to adapt it to the needs of the proletariat. She has been a book kiosk, a worker's cooperative stall, a movie theater box office, a stationery kiosk, and even a kerosene shop. The frescoes, of course, were plastered, and the drum with the cupola was destroyed. The Great Patriotic War spared the chapel, but in 1969 fate overtook it in the form of the construction of another bridge. Like its predecessor, the chapel turned out to be out of place: the embankment needed to be remade, and it was decided to demolish the chapel as “having no artistic value”. It was only by a miracle that they managed to save it from active officials and, having cut it into two parts, they lowered the chapel from the embankment onto the bank of the Great and restored it.

Currently, the chapel stands behind a fence and can only be seen from the Olginsky Bridge. It seems that most of the time it is in a closed state, so it is almost impossible to see the paintings.

Church of the Assumption at the Ferry (1521, with a free-standing belfry), Riga Avenue, 2. Paromenskaya Church is almost impossible to miss. It is very large, with the most massive belfry, and it also stands in a very busy place - near the bridge connecting the city center with Zavelichye, almost opposite the Pskov Krom. The bridge in this place has existed since time immemorial, but until the beginning of the 20th century it was built on rafts, which were dismantled in the winter and collected after the flood. In the meantime, the bridge was under construction, a ferry service operated, which gave the name to the church standing next to it. If you want to imagine how the church looked like in antiquity, you should go down from the modern Olginsky bridge raised to the embankment and approach it from the side of the river, as if from the former ferry crossing.

The first Paromenskaya church appeared in 1443. The next, stone, was built in 1521. And it acquired forms close to modern ones at the turn of the 17th and 18th centuries. From the very beginning, the church was distinguished by its majestic scale. The central volume of the monument is an ancient four-pillared quadrangle, covered with box vaults. From the east, three ancient semicircular apses adjoin it, the central one is distinguished by its large size and traditional roller patterns as decoration. In ancient times, the quadrangle had an eight-pitched roof, and the light drum with slotted window openings was crowned with an onion dome. The ancient aisles were not preserved; at the turn of the 17th and 18th centuries they were replaced by two new ones with rectangular apses typical of their time and small decorative cupolas. Around the same time, the shape of the central dome also changed, above which, until 1944, there was a wooden cross with gilded copper cladding. The cross was crowned with a cast figurine of a dove slightly larger than a real bird. The dove is a symbol of the Holy Spirit and, according to legend, its grace will remain over the city while the bird sits on the cross of the Paromenskaya church. The current cross, also with a dove, is an inaccurate copy of the ancient cross. The old floors, windows and two wooden window sills from 1521 have been preserved in the interior.

The remarkable five-span belfry on a massive base was somewhat distorted in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, when its poly-gabled roof, with two slopes over each span, was replaced by a simplified four-slope roof.

Cathedral of John the Baptist (1240), st. Maxim Gorky, 1. The Cathedral is the only surviving building of the ancient John the Baptist (Ivanovsky) Monastery. According to the version that developed at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, the monastery was founded by the daughter of Polotsk prince Rogvold Efrosinya, who became a monk in 1240. Efrosinya's husband was Prince Yaroslav Vladimirovich of Pskov, who surrendered the city to the Germans in 1240. In 1243, the prince lured his wife out of the monastery, calling her on a date to the Livonian city of Odempe (Bear's Head), where she was killed by the son of Yaroslav from his first wife. The princess was buried within the walls of the monastery founded by her, and the monastery for many centuries turned into a burial place for Pskov princesses. According to a relatively recent version, the cathedral appeared earlier than the monastery itself, somewhere around 1120-1130.

Located outside the fortress walls, the monastery often suffered from enemy raids. So, in 1615, the Swedish king Gustav, who settled down with an army on Snyatnaya Gora and in Zavelichye, fired at the Pskov fortress from the territory of the Ivanovsky Monastery for three days. In the 18th century, the John the Baptist Monastery was one of the most famous in the Pskov diocese and was visited by the nobility, including members of the royal family. In 1923, the monastery was closed, and the cathedral was transferred to the tannery, which set up a club here. Almost the entire monastery cemetery was demolished, and its territory was asphalted. In 1944, the cathedral was badly damaged by fire, which destroyed almost all of the later additions. The post-war restoration was carried out according to the project of A.L. Maksimov, who tried, to the best of his ability, to restore the cathedral in its original form. At the same time, the long-lost pozakomar covering was restored, and the heads were given an ancient helmet-like shape.

The cathedral is unique in many ways. Firstly, unlike all other Pskov churches, built from local limestone slabs, in addition to the slab, brick was used in the masonry of the cathedral, the shape and composition of which differs from the local one. Secondly, the cathedral is made on the models of large Novgorod temples of the 12th century and has no analogues in Pskov. By the way, this is why it is believed that it was built by Novgorod masters.

The chetverik of the cathedral, rectangular in plan, has six pillars that define the four-part structure of the organization of the internal space. This structure is highlighted on the facades by arches and vanes, turning into arcs of semicircular zakomaras with two-stage breaks. Three powerful semicircular apses adjoin the quadrangle from the east. The cathedral has three domes, shifted from the center of the quadrangle: the large one is shifted to the apses, and two small ones are to the western edge of the building. Small domes appeared for a reason: the arched windows of their drums were necessary to illuminate the choir located in the western part of the building.
Alterations of the cathedral began already in the 16th century and did not stop until the 20th century. The southern wall of the cathedral, on which a two-span belfry of the 16th century is located, suffered the least damage. The western extension is the result of 17th century alterations. The decor of the cathedral is extremely laconic. Almost its only decoration is the arched frieze in the upper part of the drums - an element from the arsenal of Novgorod church architecture.
The interior of the temple deserves a special inspection. Its main volume is covered with cylindrical vaults, the apses - with conchs, and the heads of the drums - with domed vaults. The choir stalls in the western part are arranged on a simple wooden deck, and a narrow internal staircase leads to them. In the sails of the central drum and in the walls, you can see open ancient golosniks. The paintings inside, for the most part, are modern, but in some places the original ones have also been preserved: at the base of the northeastern pillar there is a "jet ornament", and on the slopes of the windows of the second light in the central apse one can see the "book style" ornament.

Church of the Myrrh-Bearing Women (1546) , st. Kommunalnaya, 11. The first wooden church in the name of the Holy Myrrh-Bearing Women was built in 1536 on the “skudelnitsa”, i.e. on the site of mass burials of those who died during pestilence. Already a decade later, in place of the wooden church, a stone church was erected in the form of a cubic quadrilateral, the only head of which rests on four pillars and box vaults. Three semicircular apses with traditional geometric ornament adjoin the quadrangle decorated with shoulder blades. The initial coating was pozakomarny, which was often found in Pskov in the 16th century.

In the 19th century, the church underwent significant alterations: the old narthex and galleries were replaced with new extensions, the southern chapel was almost completely rebuilt (an apse with windows and ancient golosniks remained from the ancient chapel), the roof was replaced with a four-pitched roof, the old belfry was broken, and the cemetery was surrounded by a fence with two-tiered gate bell tower. By the way, several crosses of the 14th-16th centuries have been preserved in the cemetery, and in the 20th century it was used as a burial place for famous citizens. So, in the northern part of the cemetery there is the grave of the famous Pskov restorer Yu.P. Spegalsky, whose selfless work gave us the opportunity to see the features of ancient Pskov.

Of the surviving antiquities at the Mironositskaya Church, there is a gathering in the under-church and a tomb chapel from the beginning of the 17th century. The doorway leading to the gathering in the subchurch is located in the western wall of the vestibule.

Surroundings
Around the city walls in the 15th century, settlements appeared with a predominant wooden building, diluted with stone parish churches. Not far from the settlements, a huge number of monasteries grew up, the construction of which, it seems, was so commonplace that it was not worth a special chronicle record. As a result, the founding date of most of the monasteries remains unknown, and we learn about their existence only from random mentions on the occasion of out of the ordinary events. Of the many ancient surrounding monasteries founded long before the 16th century, only one complete ensemble has survived - the Snetogorsk Monastery. From the rest, either separate temples scattered around the former settlements that are part of the modern city, or annalistic references have come down.

Picturesquely located on the right bank of the Great, the Snetogorsky Monastery occupies the top of the Taken Mountain - an ancient rock that gave the name to the monastery and, in turn, named "in honor" of the local commercial fish - snet. The date of foundation of the monastery is lost for centuries, and the first mention in the Pskov chronicle dates back to 1299 and is associated with the tragic death of 17 monks and Abbot Iasaph. According to one of the legends, it was Iasaph who was the founder of the monastery. Another legend attributes the founding of the monastery to Prince Dovmont Timothy.

The main attraction of the monastery is the Cathedral of the Nativity of the Virgin with ancient frescoes from the beginning of the 14th century. The cathedral was painted almost immediately after construction, and its frescoes, although they are inferior in terms of preservation to the paintings of the Mirozhsky Monastery, nevertheless deserve the closest attention. Unlike the Byzantine-style Mirozh frescoes, the Snegororsk painting is the earliest known example of the Pskov school of monumental painting. Unfortunately, after the transfer of the monastery to the church authorities, the cathedral is almost always closed. An exception is made only for tourist groups visiting the monastery on weekends.

The original composition of the cathedral largely repeated the Transfiguration Cathedral of the Mirozhsky Monastery, differing from it only in proportions and processing of the upper part of the dome drum. In the 15th century, a vestibule was added to the cathedral from the west, and in the 16th century it was replaced by a new extension. In the 17th century, the western part of the cathedral underwent very significant changes and since then it has consisted of a porch, a refectory and an open porch decorated with green glazed tiles. At the end of the 17th century, a new four-slope roof was made, replacing the eight-slope roof of the 16th century, which, in turn, replaced the original roofing roof. The new roof covered the lower part of the drum and it had to be built up in order to slightly straighten out the proportions of the entire structure. Along the way, an ornament of the 14th century from triangular arches was cut down, and a traditional Pskov four-row belt made of a runner, a curb and an arched belt was made a little higher. The ancient belt of arches was restored during the 1950 restoration.

The interior structure of the cathedral is unique for Pskov. The space inside is divided into four parts by longitudinal walls in the direction from the entrance to the altar part. The longitudinal rooms of the temple are covered with closed and box vaults and are interconnected by passages in the walls. In front of the altar, there is a space free from the longitudinal walls, above which rises a hollow drum, cut through by narrow light windows.

Frescoes have been preserved on almost all the walls of the cathedral, although their color scheme is very different from the original. The plots of the Theotokos cycle and the Nativity of Christ are quite canonical, and the most remarkable fresco is the composition of the Last Judgment located in the western nave of the cathedral, containing a number of absolutely unique details.

Other monuments of the current convent are the St. Nicholas Church, heavily rebuilt in 1814, the remains of the bell tower - it was half dismantled in 1932-1935 and finished off during the Great Patriotic War, - similar to the gates of the Mirozhsky Monastery, the Holy Gate, built in 1805 Bishops' Chambers and a low fence with turrets.

Photo and video filming on the territory of the monastery, although not prohibited, is not “blessed”, which leads to unpleasant squabbles with elderly nuns.

About 300 meters from the Taken Mountain, on a low hill, there is a pretty chapel of the Four Hierarchs. In 1913, the icon "Selected Saints" of the 15th century was taken out of it, now stored in the Tretyakov Gallery.

Church of Peter and Paul on Breza (XVI century), st. Coastal, 2 (near the bridge of Alexander Nevsky). Halfway from Pskov to the Taken Mountain, on the banks of the Great, there are the remains of the Seretkin Monastery, known at least since the 16th century. The pillarless Peter and Paul Church with an ancient quadrangle of the 16th century and an annex of the 17th century adjoining it with a shed roof has come down to us with minimal alterations. On the annex once stood a curious belfry with four spans facing all directions of the world, converted in the 19th century into a bell tower with a spire. On the south and west sides, the belfry is decorated with crosses made of stove tiles. Directly under the belfry is a stone tent that served as a cell for the 17th century Polish archbishop Arseniy, where the window openings of the 17th century have been preserved intact. From the rest of the buildings of the monastery, which stood on the very bank of the river, there were only cellars with vaults that had failed in places.

Church of St. John the Theologian on Misharina Gora (1547), st. Alleynaya, 1. The church is located near the confluence of the Milevka (Milyavitsa) stream into the Pskov River on the low Misharina Hill. The name of the hill comes either from the name of the clerk Misyur, who became famous in the 16th century for his charity, or from the numerous mshars - swampy swampy places - surrounding the hill. The stone church on Milyavitsa appeared in 1547 and at that time belonged to the Kostelnikov Monastery, which was abolished in 1764. Since that time, the church has become a parish. It was rebuilt many times, and, apparently, only the walls of the quadrangle and three apses have survived from the building of the 16th century, among which the middle apse is especially remarkable, preserving the window framing characteristic of the 16th century with roller divorces in the form of a cross. The original vaults of the main part of the temple, placed on four pillars, were replaced in the 17th–18th centuries by a closed vault resting on the walls, at the same time the eight-slope roof was replaced by a four-slope one, crowning it with a small cupola. The six-span bell tower, erected over the porch of the 17th century, belongs to the end of the 17th-beginning of the 18th century.

Church of Barbara the Great Martyr (1618), st. Plekhanovsky Posad, 14 (not far from the Pokrovskaya Tower). The church is the only monument of wooden architecture in Pskov and its age is already approaching four centuries. Of course, she lost some details, but her extremely simple composition of three cubic volumes - the narthex, the main room and the altar part - is original. The main volume is covered with a gable roof and topped with a small cupola. Small windows and a doorway are decorated with simple architraves. In the 19th century, a cubic bell tower stood on the porch, but it was dismantled during the restoration of the 20th century.

Church of Constantine and Helena (XVI century), st. Krasnogorskaya, 26 (right bank of Pskov). The church is picturesquely located on the banks of the Pskov River in the former Tsar's Sloboda. The date of its construction is unknown, but the features of the architecture allow it to be attributed to the 16th century. According to the composition, this is a typical four-pillar church with three apses and one cupola. The decor of the church is traditional. The original eight-slope covering has not been preserved, the southern aisle, the porch and the two-tiered bell tower appeared in the 18th-19th centuries. At the end of the 20th century, a fence with round turrets and a small two-span belfry, stylized in antiquity, was made around the church.

Church of Demetrius Myrrh-streaming (1534), st. Plekhanov Posad, 74 Nazimov (1888), historian and local historian I. I. Vasilev (1901) and collector and collector of antiquities F. M. Plyushkin (1911), whose collection became the basis of the Pskov Museum. There is also a mass grave of Soviet soldiers.

The current building replaced an older monastery church, known since the 14th century. The southern chapel appeared in 1783, and the three-tiered bell tower was built in 1864. The basis of the church is a four-pillar cubic volume with three apses, topped with a light drum and a late dome. The decor of the facades, apses and drum is typical of Pskov churches of the 16th century.

Church of Alexei from the Field (1540), st. Sovetskaya, 100. The church is located behind the former Great Gates in the former Alekseevskaya Sloboda. It was built in 1540 on the site of a burned-out or dismantled predecessor and was located on the territory of the Aleksevsky Monastery. Located outside the fortress walls, in the 16th-18th centuries, the church repeatedly found itself in the thick of hostilities. At the end of the 17th century, the monastery “burned down without a trace” and after the restoration the church became a parish.

This is a small, single-domed, pillarless church, consisting of a single-apse quadrangle, a southern aisle, a vestibule, and a baroque two-tier bell tower crowned with a spire. Only the walls of the quadrangle have survived from the original construction, everything else, including the ceilings of the premises, dates back to the 18th century. The ancient decor of the church was extremely laconic: a three-part articulation with shoulder blades on the northern facade of the quadrangle, and a corbel of a runner in the upper part of the apse, opened during the restoration of 1969. The later southern aisle is decorated with a three-roller cornice, and its windows are framed with platbands.

Church of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker in Lyubyatovo (XVI century), st. Lyubyatovskaya, 2. The church is located on the left bank of the Pskov River in the area of modern buildings, about three kilometers from the eastern wall of the Round City. In ancient times, the Lyubyatov Monastery was located here, it is not known by whom and when it was founded. Chronicles report that in 1570 Ivan the Terrible stayed in the monastery. During the siege of Pskov by the troops of Stafan Batory, in 1581, the monastery was used to house Polish soldiers. The Poles were marked in history by the damage to the icon of Our Lady of Lyubyatov from the beginning of the 15th century, now exhibited in the Tretyakov Gallery.
The date of construction of the stone church of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker is unknown, but according to the peculiarities of architecture, it is attributed to the 16th century. At that time it was a small four-pillar one-apse church with a combination of gabled roofing and five domes, rare for Pskov. Later, four small cupolas were dismantled and the main volume became single-domed, and the roof was replaced with a four-pitched one. A low bell tower with a hexagonal ringing tier and ending in the form of a spire appeared at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries. The southern aisle was built at the end of the 17th century, but completely redone at the beginning of the 20th century.

Botanical Garden. Immediately behind the southern wall of the Round City, between Kuznetskaya, Sverdlov and Oktyabrsky Prospect streets, there is the Botanical Garden, and in it is the Sokolsky bastion of the early 18th century. The garden was opened in 1878 by the works of N.I. Raevsky, but after the Great Patriotic War, only a wasteland remained from him. The current garden is the result of the city's residents' efforts to restore it. Introducers such as Amur velvet, Manchurian walnut, Ussuri pear and Siberian fir grow in the park.

 

What to do

Museums
Pskov State United Historical, Architectural and Art Museum-Reserve, Nekrasova Street, 7. ☎ +7 (8112) 66-33-11. Mon–Sun 11:00–18:00. In the central building of the museum - Art and Industrial School. Van der Fleet of the beginning of the 20th century - there are two expositions: "Art of Western Europe of the 16th-19th centuries" and "Russian art of the 18th-20th centuries".
Pogankin chambers, Nekrasov street, 7. ☎ +7 (8112) 66-33-11. Tue–Sun 11:00–18:00. The exposition of the museum is located in a 17th-century building, where you can admire the arrangement of merchants' chambers of that time, including vaulted ceilings, in-wall staircases and restored tiled stoves on the upper floors. The museum is proud of its collection of icons of the Pskov school of the 14th-17th centuries, which also includes the icon "The Vision of the Elder Dorotheus" depicting ancient Pskov during the siege of Stafan Batory. The collection "Russian artistic silver", among other things, contains several exhibits from the ancient Pskov treasures.
Order Chamber, Kremlin, 4. ☎ +7 (8112) 72-45-74. Wed–Sun 11:00–18:00. The only museum in the country that tells about the system of government of the Russian state and shows the restored interior of the premises used by officials at the end of the 17th century.
Vlasievskaya tower. ☎ (8112) 72-45-74. daily 11.00 - 18.00, except Monday and Tuesday. 50 rub. (2013).
Spaso-Preobrazhensky Cathedral of the Mirozhsky Monastery, Mirozhskaya Embankment, 2. ☎ +7 (8112) 56-73-02. Tue–Sun 11:00–18:00, the Cathedral is open for visits only in dry weather. In 2013 it was closed for restoration.
Palaty Menshikov, st. Sovetskaya, 50. Tue–Sat 11:00–18:00. In the restored chambers of the 17th century, an exposition called "Gallery of Naive Art" is presented, showing the best part of the collection of works by naive artists from the funds of the Pskov Museum-Reserve.
Pskov Smithy Yard, Komsomolsky lane, 7. ☎ +7 (8112) 66-33-11. Mon–Fri 10:00–17:00, by appointment by phone.
Depository of the Pskov Museum-Reserve, Masson's House, Komsomolsky per., 6. ☎ +7 (8112) 66-33-11. Thu–Sat 11:00–17:00, guided tours by appointment by phone. edit
Memorial Museum-Apartment of Yu.P. Spegalsky, Oktyabrsky prospect, 14/1, apt. 74. Yu.P. Spegalsky is known not only for his work on the measurement and restoration of the monuments of Pskov and St. Petersburg, but also for a series of wonderful drawings "Pskov of the 17th century", created by him in besieged Leningrad.
Railway Museum, Vokzalnaya street, 38. ☎ +7 (8112) 70-66-32. 🕑 Tue–Thursday 10:00–18:00, Tue–Fri 11:00–17:00, Sat 11:00–15:00.
Museum of the Novel Two Captains, Oktyabrskaya Square, 7.

Theaters
Pskov Academic Theatre. A.S. Pushkin, st. Pushkin, 13. ☎ (8112) 66-40-39, 72-74-02, 72-80-22 (cashier), 72-83-42.
Pskov Regional Puppet Theatre, st. Konnaya 3 (on the banks of the Velikaya River, next to the Olginsky Bridge). ☎ (8112) 56-33-13.

Cinemas
Cinema "October", pl. Lenina, 3. ☎ 7 (811) 272-20-72. The cinema "October" has two halls: "Aristocrat" and "Favorite". Closed for renovation since 2016.
Cinema "Victory", Oktyabrsky prospect, 17. ☎ (8112) 75-77-07.
Cinema "Change", Oktyabrsky prospect, 17a. ☎ (8112)73-97-33. Currently under renovation (November 2013)
16 "Mirage Cinema", (TRK) Aquapolis, st. Kuzbass Division, 19. ☎ 8 (800) 505-17-85. There are several halls in the cinema, 2 of which are VIP categories.

 

Eat

Cheap
Cafe "Bulochkin", Grazhdanskaya st. 5 (on the way to the station). 8:00–22:00. Inexpensive cafe with homemade pies and a small selection of hot dishes heated in the microwave.
Cafe "Mill". ☎ +7-(8112)-72-05-91. Soups, pancakes: 50–70 rubles, hot dishes: 80–120 rubles (2013). Local fast food, created not without the influence of the St. Petersburg "Tea Spoon", although the prices are lower here, and the atmosphere is perhaps even better. There are only 6-7 types of pancakes, but there are full-fledged hot dishes. Free WiFi.
st. Lenina, 1 (central square, opposite the Kremlin). around the clock.
Communal st. 73 (TK Gulliver, the far edge of Zavelichye).
Oktyabrsky pr. 54 (Maximus shopping center, not far from the station).
Sergievskaya dining room, Oktyabrsky prospekt. 19. ☎ +7 (8112) 73-71-24. 8:00–22:00. An ordinary dining room with trays and distribution, but decorated as a full-fledged cafe with obvious and maybe even excessive show off. The letter i is a tribute to the pre-revolutionary name of Oktyabrsky Prospekt, and not at all to Ukraine, as one might think.

Average cost
Cafe "Old Fortress" (formerly "Arsenal"), corner of Oktyabrsky pr. and st. Sverdlov. around the clock. Hot dishes: 200–300 rubles (2013). A stylish establishment that is very reminiscent of Estonian pubs in spirit: an unusual interior, a wide range of beer and a modest selection of actual food. The cafe is located right in the fortress wall, so the hall here is narrow and long. Each table has a telephone to call the waiter. It’s worth going for the exotic, don’t expect culinary discoveries.
Cafe-pizzeria "Kofein", st. M. Gorky, 29 (Zavelichiye). ☎ +7 (8112) 57-12-93. 10:00–23:00. Pizza: 200–300 rubles; coffee: from 60 rubles (2009). You won’t surprise anyone with a retro interior and a collection of old things now, but in Caffeine everything is chosen so well that you really don’t want to leave the cafe, and pizza surprisingly goes well with coffee, the smell of which will meet you at the very entrance. Contrary to Russian tradition, this is a real pizzeria, that is, apart from pizza, there is no food here - not even pasta: only drinks and desserts. Good feedback.
Restaurant Bierhoff, Rizhsky pr. 16 (Zavelichie, shopping mall "Rizhsky"). ☎ +7 (8112) 57-40-00. Fri–Tue 12:00–1:00, Wed–Fri 12:00–3:00, Sat 13:00–3:00, Sun 13:00–1:00. A mug of beer: 80 rubles, hot dishes: 100–200 rubles (2009). Beer restaurant with good beer of its own production and mostly meat hot dishes. In the evenings very loud music, there may not be empty seats.

Expensive
Yard Podznoev, Nekrasov, 1b. ☎ +7(8112)79-70-00. about 1000 per person. Restaurant and cafe in a restored fortress with delicious dishes. 4 chambers with different design and atmosphere (Wine, Beer, Refectory, Pirogovaya and Coffee chambers), the Beer Chamber is recommended for authentic Russian cuisine.
Tavern and bar "903", st. Nabat, 2a (bar) and 2b (tavern). ☎ +7 (900) 9-903-903. rubles for 700-800 per person. Restaurant and bar with the same menu are located in neighboring buildings. Good homemade beer.

Coffee houses
Cafe Caramel, Oktyabrsky pr. 22. ☎ +7 (8112) 66-20-56. Mon–Thurs 8:00–23:00, Fri 8:00–24:00, Sat 11:00–24:00, Sun 11:00–23:00. Hot dishes: 150–250 rubles, pancakes: 80–120 rubles (2013). A cozy coffee shop with a good menu and an unexpectedly attentive attitude towards travelers: if you arrive in Pskov by Moscow train, call ahead and the cafe will open especially for you at 7:45. And maybe even get coffee for free: there is a “suspended coffee” system, for which previous visitors pay. Free WiFi.
Coffee house "Chocolate", st. Fabricius, 2/17 (Victory Square). ☎ +7 (8112) 72-73-83. 11:00–23:00. Coffee: 60–100 rubles, hot dishes: 150–250 rubles (2013). Quite an average coffee house, but in Pskov this is perhaps the first coffee house in general, and therefore it still enjoys well-deserved popularity among local residents. You can eat pancakes, salads, pastas and just a few types of hot dishes (mostly “juliennes in a pan”). Free WiFi.

 

Night life

• Club Soda Riga prospect 16 22.00 - 06.00
• KSK "Super" Oktyabrsky prospect 56

 

Hotels

Cheap
1  Hotel Avatar, Sovetskaya st. 111, 3rd floor (in the southern part of the city). ☎ +7 (8112) 66-26-86, +7 (8112) 66-94-54. Double room without amenities / with amenities: 1400/2300 rubles, single room without amenities: 900 rubles (2014). A new hotel, occupying one floor in an unsightly residential building. Nevertheless, everything inside is very decent, and there are cheap rooms. Free WiFi.
2  Hotel "Krom", st. Metallistov, 5 (in the south-eastern part of the city, 10 minutes walk from the station). ✉ ☎ +7 (8112) 73-90-07. Double room without amenities / with amenities: from 1260/2000 rubles, single room with amenities: from 1300 rubles (2013). Hotel in the building of a former hostel, 20-25 minutes walk from Krom. Corridors, some rooms and common bathroom fixtures have been refurbished, but the cheap rooms leave much to be desired: old furniture, creaky floors, doors and beds. A significant inconvenience is created by hot water, which smells strongly of hydrogen sulfide, although apparently harmless. For rooms without amenities on the floor there is a free shower, but its sanitary condition also raises questions. The most economical travelers can stay in triple or quadruple rooms, from 550 rubles per person.
3  Hotel Olginskaya, Paromenskaya st. 4 (Zavelichie). ☎ +7 (8112) 57-08-88, +7 (8112) 57-51-51. Double without amenities / with amenities: 1700/2600 rubles, single: from 1000 rubles (2014). The hotel is located on the banks of the Velikaya River, opposite Krom (5-10 min walk). A Soviet-era building with a Soviet level of service and customer service. The rooms are in good condition. Contradictory reviews of the hotel. But nevertheless, this is one of the cheapest and well-located hotels in Pskov.
4 Hotel "Pilgrim", Krestovskoe Highway 83 (next to the bypass). ☎ +7 (8112) 62-04-90, +7 (906) 222-77-99. Double room: 1400 rubles (2014). In terms of meaning, this is a motel, and the cheapest of those that are located in Pskov itself and are accessible by public transport. Amenities are shared by a block of two rooms, there are expensive double rooms with private facilities, there are also cheap triple and quadruple rooms. Free WiFi. Visitors rather praise, although they note that it is cheap and cheerful here.
5  Sport Hotel, st. Labor, 51 (Zapskovye). ☎ +7 (8112) 53-86-81. Double / triple room: 1640/2460 rubles (2014). Far from the center and quite unsightly. All rooms are old, with amenities on the block. Free WiFi.
6  Old City Hotel   , Krestovskoe highway, 43. ☎ +7 (906) 222-87-15. around the clock. from 800 rubles A new cozy hotel in a quiet area of the city, a five-minute drive from the center.

Average cost
7  Hotel "Kolos", st. Red Partizan, 2 (northern part of the center). ☎ +7 (8112) 72-32-56. Double room: 2850–3000 rubles (2011). The hotel is located in an unattractive area, but close to the main Pskov sights (5 min walk to Krom). Looks great, good reviews. Free WiFi.
8 Hotel "Oktyabrskaya", Oktyabrsky pr. 36 (south-eastern part of the center). ✉ ☎ +7 (8112) 66-42-46, +7 (8112) 66-42-54. Double room: 1800–2200 rubles, single room: 1300 rubles (2014). In the past, one of the oldest and cheapest hotels in Pskov has now risen in price and got rid of the most dead multi-bed rooms. Now it is clean here, every room has a bathroom and not the most miserable environment, although there are still a lot of bad reviews.
9  Rizhskaya Hotel, 25 Rizhsky Ave. (travel from the station by buses No. 2 and 17.). ☎ +7 (8112) 56-22-23, +7 (8112) 56-76-12, fax: +7-(8112)-56-23-01. Single room: 1600 rubles, double room: 2900 rubles (2014). Large hotel in the western part of the city (15-20 min walk to the center). Overhaul did not save her from such a wonderful feature as those on duty on the floor, who take away the keys from the guests and give out boiling water. The reviews are good, but everyone agrees that the hotel is a little expensive: for example, breakfast is paid separately, although Wi-Fi is finally free.
10  Tranzit Hotel, st. Dekabristov, 64. ✉ ☎ +7 (8112) 73-60-06, +7 (921) 215-63-73, Tranzitpsk. Double room: 1700–2500 rubles (2014). The center is 20 minutes by bus, the bypass is 10 minutes on foot, so this is more of a roadside motel than a hotel. The rooms are renovated, with amenities, breakfast included in the price. Free secure parking. The cheapest rooms are singles (half bed) with double occupancy, real doubles are more expensive. Free WiFi.
11 Balt House Motel, 19 Leningradskoe Shosse (at the bypass road). ✉ ☎ +7 (8112) 66-67-92. Double room: 2100-2300 rubles, in multi-bed rooms: from 700 rubles / person (2014). Roadside motel, and not the cheapest. Free Wi-Fi, paid guarded parking. Reviews are quite contradictory.
12 Mini-hotel "Gnezdo", st. Vladimirskaya, 3v (Zavelichiye). ☎ +7 (8112) 77-79-00, +7 (8112) 57-81-78. Double room: 1800–2200 rubles, 20% more expensive in summer (2014). Several apartments in a new residential building have been turned into a hotel. The location is not the most convenient - the center is 40 minutes on foot or with rare public transport, but the hotel itself, apparently, is not bad. Free WiFi.
13 Mini-hotel Karkushin Dom, st. Vorovskogo, 7 (in the center). ☎ +7 (8112) 79-09-09, +7 (8112) 79-09-04. Single / double: 2700/3200 rubles. Quiet and cozy place, relatively small rooms; has its own parking and restaurant, Wi-Fi. Good feedback. Jul 2021
14 Chemodan Hotel, 56E Oktyabrsky Ave. ✉ ☎ +7 (8112) 616160.  Double room: 2500 rubles, single room: 1600 rubles (2018). Good for the price rooms with air conditioning, refrigerator and wi-fi. The hotel occupies the third floor of a three-story building without an elevator. Despite the address "Oktyabrsky Prospekt", in fact it is located on Vokzalnaya Street. Before its intersection with Oktyabrsky Prospekt, 3 minutes on foot, to the bus stop - 5 minutes, to the station - about 10 minutes.
15  Hotel Angelskaya  , Pskov, per. Filled, 1/14. ☎ +7 (8112) 33-17-01, +7 (911) 899-03-03. 🕑 around the clock. 2500 - 8000 rub. It is located not far from the Mikhailovskaya Tower and from the favorite resting place of the Pskovites - the Finnish Park. The Kremlin can be reached on foot in 20 minutes. There is free guarded parking, free Wi-Fi throughout the hotel. The hotel has a restaurant of Russian and European cuisine.

Expensive
16 Old Estate Hotel&Spa, st. Verkhne-Beregovaya, 4 (Zapskovye). ☎ +7 (8112) 79-45-45. Double room: from 5400 rubles (2014). Elite 4-star hotel. Beautiful, comfortable, expensive. A swimming pool and spa are available for guests. Free WiFi. Good feedback.
17 Guest house "At Pokrovka", st. Voevody Shuisky, 17 (Velikaya Embankment opposite the Mirozhsky Monastery). ✉ ☎ +7 (8112) 29-11-90, +7 (964) 676-00-00. Double rooms: 3600–4600 rubles (2014). The guest house offers a "vintage vacation in Pskov" and is designed not for tourists, but for large companies renting the whole house. There are 4 rooms with double beds, a living room and two shared bathrooms. The price includes breakfast; in addition, a cook prepares a variety of dishes on request.
18  Hotel "Dvor Podznoeva", st. Nekrasova, 1b (in the southern part of the center). ☎ +7 (8112) 79-70-00, +7 (8112) 79-70-01. Double room: from 4500 rubles (2014). Modern business hotel in a quiet location, 10 min walk from Crom. Courteous service, three-star comfort. Free secure parking. Breakfast is included in the room rate - not the most varied, but more or less complete. Free WiFi. Prepayment ("early booking") allows you to get a small discount.
19  Favorit Hotel, st. Children's, 1b (center). ✉ ☎ +7 (8112) 70-06-31, +7 (8112) 70-06-32, +7 (906) 220-70-00. Double room: 3000–3500 rubles (2014). A small hotel located in the very center of the city, on the banks of the Great. All rooms with private facilities, double beds everywhere. Breakfast is included in the room rate. There is Wi-Fi and free parking. Good feedback.
20 Mini-hotel "Edem", Rotnaya st. 44 (in the southern part of the city). ☎ +7 (8112) 66-39-57. Double room: 3000–3500 rubles (2014). The hotel is located near the railway station, but fairly far from the center of Pskov. There are 11 rooms in total, mostly suites. Everything is new and beautiful. Free WiFi. Good feedback.
21 Hotel Zolotaya Embankment, Sovetskaya emb. 2 (Zapskovye). ✉ ☎ +7 (8112) 62-78-77. Double room: 2900–3200 rubles (2014). The location of this hotel is close to ideal: in a quiet location right in front of Crom. Modern rooms with Wi-Fi. Good feedback.

 

Connection

Access to the Internet
In the cafe Melnitsa on the square. Lenin (round the clock), at the post office (Sovetskaya st., 20: Mon-Fri 8.00-17.00, lunch 11.00-11.30 and 14.30-15.00).

 

Etymology

The name of the city is associated with a hydronym - the Pskova River. There are different versions of the origin of the name of the city and the river. According to one of them - of Slavic origin - the name Pleskov (Plskov) comes from the Old Russian word "ples" - part of the river between two bends - or from the word "sand". The form of Pskov, used in the Laurentian Chronicle and characteristic of the northeastern tradition of chronicle writing, has been fixed as a linguistic norm since the 15th century due to the hegemony of Moscow[9]. According to another version - of Baltic-Finnish origin - the name comes from the word piskava (in Liv), piskva, pihkva (in Estonian), meaning "resinous water" and reflects the polyethnicity of the early population of the city. Other interpretations of the hydronym are “splash”, “shine”, “fish river”, “sand”. Archaeologists have established that in Pskov X-XI centuries. the ancestors of the Slavs lived - the Pskov Krivichi, representatives of the Baltic-Finnish, Baltic and Scandinavian tribes.

The term "skobari" is often associated with the inhabitants of Pskov and the Pskov region. The most common is the version according to which there was a gradual transition from the word "Pskov" to the name "Skobar" by replacing individual sounds and parts of the word, largely due to the specifics of the Pskov dialects ("Pskov-Pskopsky-Skopsky-Skobsky-Skobsky" and as a result could reverse word formation occurs: “skobsky-staples-staples”). According to another version, the city has been famous for its blacksmithing since ancient times, and, according to legend, Tsar Peter I called the people of Pskov "staples" after he could not unbend the bracket forged by local blacksmiths (and he easily unbent ordinary horseshoes). It was here, in Pskov, that the song "From Dawn to Dawn Forged Staples Staples" was born.

 

History of Pskov

The emergence of the city
The age of Pskov is not exactly known. Archaeological research near the mouth of the Pskov in the northern tip of the Krom (Kremlin) showed that this area was inhabited 2000 years ago. The middle - third quarter of the 1st millennium AD dates back to the site of the Pskov settlement of the settlement of the "culture of long mounds", left by settlers from the south. In the 7th-9th centuries, on the site of the Pskov settlement, there was a settlement Pskov V, related to the bearers of the Ryuge culture, which died in a fire in the early 860s. According to the appearance of the material culture, Pskov V and Izborsk are associated with the antiquities of the interfluve of the Lower Vistula and Oder. The end of the 9th century - the beginning of the 11th century dates back to the period of building on the Pskov settlement, represented by wooden log buildings with plank floors on logs and a stove in the corner. The area of the settlement of Pskov G-I by the middle of the 10th century reached 12-15 hectares, and the population increased by 5-7 times. The finds of this period testify to the appearance in the city of immigrant settlers of Scandinavian origin[20]. The 8 chamber burials of the Starovoznesensky necropolis found in the southern part of the Okolny city date back to the second half of the 10th century. The governor, who was buried in chamber burial No. 6 at the Podznoevsky XII excavation site, was buried half-sitting in an “armchair” with painted details until 967.

The official date of foundation of Pskov is considered to be 903, the year of the first mention of the city in the annals. In the older (Commission) list of the Novgorod First Chronicle of the younger version, the story about Igor and Olga says: “and again bring yourself a wife from Pleskov, named Olga.” According to the Laurentian Chronicle (The Tale of Bygone Years) - In years ҂s҃. uh. аı҃. [903] Igor will grow up. and hozhashe on Ѡlzѣ and sloushash єg̑. and brought єmu zhenou ѿ Pskov. named valenu (In the year 6411 (903), when Igor grew up, he accompanied Oleg and listened to him, and they brought him a wife from Pskov, named Elena). The pagan at that time Olga is named in the Laurentian Chronicle by the name given at baptism in 957. According to legend, when Princess Olga was standing on the bank of the Great, she had a vision: three rays emanating from the sky converged on the opposite bank. At this place, the princess ordered the construction of a cathedral in honor of the Holy Trinity, and around “the city is great, glorious and in all abundance!”.

X—XIII centuries
Until the 12th century, Pskov was part of Kievan Rus. After the proclamation of the Novgorod feudal republic in 1136, the city came under the rule of Novgorod. Novgorod and Pskov had common military interests. Several times Novgorodians and Pskovians had to defend themselves against military campaigns of the Principality of Polotsk and from attacks from neighboring Baltic tribes. In 1240 Pskov was surrounded by troops of the Teutonic Order. When the Germans were about to lift the siege and retreat, the boyar Tverdilo secretly opened the gates of the city at night, hoping to seize power in Pskov with the help of the German feudal lords. For a year and a half, Pskov was occupied by the order. Only in 1242 the city was liberated by the army of Alexander Nevsky.

The constant danger that threatened Pskov from the west made it necessary to strengthen and develop the fortress. The territory of the Kremlin was significantly expanded during the reign of Prince Dovmont. It is possible that at this time the wooden walls began to be replaced with stone ones. By his order, a stone wall was built, passing from the coast of Pskov to the coast of the Great.

 

Capital of the veche republic

In the 12th-13th centuries, the main trading partners of Pskov were the cities of Narva, Yuryev (now Tartu), Riga, Polotsk, Smolensk, and, to a lesser extent, Novgorod. The Pskov lands provided the city with bread and other products, so Pskov was not economically dependent on Novgorod. They were connected only by common military interests. However, after the Battle of the Ice, their common enemy, the Teutonic Order, no longer posed a danger to Novgorod. Novgorodians had to fight only with the Swedes, and Pskov alone repelled the onset of the Livonian Order. Thus, the military ties between Pskov and Novgorod were destroyed. By this time, Pskov had its own boyars, quite numerous and strong, striving to take all power in Pskov land into their own hands. In fact, Pskov became independent at the end of the 13th century, under Prince Dovmont.

In 1348, the Bolotovsky Treaty was signed, according to which the Novgorod Republic recognized the independence of the Pskov Republic from the Novgorod posadniks, and the governor of the lord began to get out of the Pskovians. In 1397, the people's veche (the highest legislative body of the Pskov Republic) adopted the first edition of the Pskov Judicial Charter - a code of laws.

By the end of the 15th century, the population of Pskov was more than 30 thousand people. Most of the urban population were artisans and merchants. The craft in Pskov was less developed than in Novgorod, but even here there were many skilled craftsmen: blacksmiths, masons, tanners, potters, and jewelers. Merchants were the main owners of Pskov trade. The Pskov merchants traded with the cities of the Baltic and Lithuania, as well as with Russian cities. In the 15th century, trade relations between Pskov and Moscow were strengthened. Pskovians sold flax, leather, fish, honey, wax, furs, and bought salt, cloth, iron, metal products and other goods. The development of trade in the Pskov land led to the creation of its own monetary system. Since 1425, the Pskovites began to mint their coins from high-grade silver and minted it until 1510.

 

As part of the unified Russian state

From 1461, power in Pskov was concentrated in the hands of the Moscow governors. Their powers have grown every year. From 1467, they received the right to send their rulers to all Pskov suburbs, and their judicial powers expanded. In 1480, Pskov withstood a siege by the Livonians, led by Bernhard von der Borch. In 1483, in violation of the legislative rights of the veche, Prince Yaroslav Obolensky changed a number of Pskov laws, which provoked a long-term uprising of the Pskovites. By the end of the 15th - beginning of the 16th century, Pskov had almost completely lost its independence. In 1502, Pskov successfully repulsed the siege of the city by the Livonian master Walter von Plettenberg. In 1509, Prince Ivan Mikhailovich Repnya-Obolensky was appointed governor of Pskov, he did not recognize the Pskov laws, did not take the oath to the veche. He himself established and collected taxes from the population, judged the people of Pskov without the participation of representatives of the veche. Ambassadors were sent to Vasily III with complaints about the new governor. The Grand Duke invited all the dissatisfied to go with their petitions (complaints) to Novgorod. On January 6, 1510, Pskov posadniks and boyars were invited to the Faceted Chamber of the Novgorod Kremlin. Vasily III demanded the destruction of the Pskov veche and the post of posadniks and the extension of the Moscow system of government to the Pskov land. This meant the complete elimination of the Pskov feudal republic and the annexation of the Pskov land to Moscow. The posadniks and boyars gathered in the Novgorod Chamber of Facets were forced to accept the demand of the Moscow sovereign.

On the morning of January 13, 1510 (7019 from the creation of the world), the Pskov Veche was convened for the last time. On behalf of the veche, the posadnik conveyed to the ambassador of Vasily III Tretiak Dalmatov the consent of the Pskovites to submit to Moscow. The veche bell was immediately removed, it was announced the liquidation of the Pskov feudal republic and the entry of its territory into the Russian state.

After joining Moscow Rus, Pskov continued to be a major trade and craft center of the Russian state. A variety of crafts were developed in Pskov: metalworking, woodworking, processing of plant and animal raw materials, pottery and construction crafts. In the middle of the 16th century in Pskov, there were 1,700 retail premises in 40 trading rows. Twice a year, in January and May, large fairs were held in Pskov. At the winter fair, in addition to other goods, large quantities of timber and dry smelts were sold, at the spring fair - hemp, lard, yuft. Pskov was an important transit point, through it flax, canvas, leather and cloth were exported abroad, and metals and industrial products were imported.

In 1565, when Tsar Ivan the Terrible divided the Russian state into oprichnina and zemshchina, the city became part of the latter.

Until 1581, the fighting of the Livonian War bypassed Pskov. After Ivan the Terrible refused to sign the peace treaty proposed by Stefan Batory, according to which Livonia and western Russia with the cities of Novgorod, Pskov and Smolensk departed the Commonwealth, the Polish king decided to take Pskov. Thus, he hoped to force the government of Ivan IV to agree to difficult peace conditions. On August 26, the troops of Stefan Batory approached Pskov and settled south of the city. Suburban monasteries were occupied by separate detachments. As always, before the arrival of the enemy, the Pskovites burned the settlement. The population of the settlement and the peasants of the surrounding villages took refuge behind the fortress walls of Pskov. Expecting an assault from the south, the Pskovites built another wooden wall along the southern wall of the Round City, parallel to the stone one. Between these walls they dug a ditch. The siege of Pskov lasted six months. But neither the general assault on September 8, nor another 30 attacks, nor digging under the fortress walls, nor a six-month siege broke the city's defenders. As a result, Bathory lifted the siege and agreed to peace negotiations.

In 1615 Pskov was besieged by the Swedes. The troops of Gustav Adolf approached the fortress from the north. Despite the powerful shelling of the city, the Pskovites repulsed the fierce assault of the Swedes.

From the 16th century, social contradictions began to grow in Pskov between peasants and feudal lords, townspeople and feudal lords. Escalation of social conflicts was also facilitated by the growth of state taxes. In the period from 1606 to 1611, uprisings broke out in Pskov. In 1650, a new major uprising broke out in Pskov. The reason for it was the obligation of Russia, following the results of the Russo-Swedish war of 1614-1617, to sell Sweden 12 thousand quarters of bread at the prices of the Pskov grain market. The sale of a large batch of grain led to a doubling of the price of bread and was the immediate cause for the outbreak of the uprising.

During the XV-XVI centuries, the fortress of Pskov continued to be strengthened. The wooden walls of the Roundabout City were replaced with stone ones. The wall of Krom was completed up to the mouth of Pskov. In Pskov, in two places - at Gremyachaya Gora and at Krom, water-bearing gates were built, which were wooden iron-covered gratings that closed the entrance to the river in wartime.

 

In the Russian Empire

The last time Pskov played an important role in the military history of pre-revolutionary Russia was at the beginning of the 18th century during the Great Northern War. In the winter of 1700-1701, the Russian regiments defeated near Narva were withdrawn to Pskov. Later, the newly formed troops were also sent there. For a while, Pskov became the center of the active Russian army. After the defeat at Narva, Pskov began to be in danger, because one could expect the Swedes to move east towards Moscow through Pskov. By order of Peter I, defensive structures were built in the Pskov fortress according to the latest military art of that time: earthen bastions and semi-bastions connected by ramparts. Surrounded by powerful new fortifications, equipped with the latest artillery for those years, Pskov became a formidable fortress capable of repelling the enemy. However, the fighting never started. The Swedish king sent his troops to the west against Poland and Saxony. The troops stationed in Pskov themselves went on the offensive.

After the Northern War, Pskov ceased to be an important large trade and defensive center of the country. As a result of the war, the borders moved far to the west, and the need for a powerful fortress on Velikaya disappeared. Having received access to the Baltic Sea, Peter I laid St. Petersburg in the Neva delta, and Russia also received the large coastal cities of Riga and Revel, where all foreign trade has shifted. Pskov became a provincial city. According to information collected in 1780 for the passage of Catherine II, there were 50 stone and 1614 wooden houses, 12 stone and up to a hundred wooden shops, grain and salt warehouses. Factories were absent; the turnover of trade in timber, flax, hemp and fish amounted to more than 300 thousand rubles, and shop trade - up to 200 thousand rubles.

With the beginning of the Patriotic War of 1812, the Russian generals considered the option of Napoleon's army attacking St. Petersburg. In this case, the Pskov province would fall into the sphere of hostilities, in connection with which a number of preparatory measures were carried out here: a reserve for the guards regiments was formed, hospitals and warehouses were created. However, a number of military successes of the Russian army prevented the French invasion of Pskov.

During the 19th century, the role of Pskov as a city-monument grew. During the 19th century, Pskov grew significantly, and there were more stone buildings. At the beginning of the century, it was mostly one-story, after 100 years it was already more than half two- and three-story. Numerous - over 50 - churches, chapels and monasteries, medieval civil stone buildings, ancient dilapidated fortress walls gave originality to the external appearance. In the 19th century, health care and education were more developed in Pskov. Since 1838, the newspaper "Pskov Gubernskie Vedomosti" began to appear. The construction of the railroad in 1859 helped boost the economy and expand trade. By 1881, water supply was opened in the city. Pskov of the 19th century was a small, quiet, green town, where life flowed measuredly and calmly, livening up during the days of fairs, bazaars, folk festivals, church processions, secular and religious holidays.

From March to June 1900 V. I. Ulyanov (Lenin) lived in Pskov. Until the January events of 1905, there were almost no strikes, demonstrations or major anti-government demonstrations in the agrarian Pskov province with an underdeveloped industry, with a small working class. The main revolutionary force in Pskov was the railway workers, who organized a number of strikes.

In 1904, the first power plant was built in the city, and in 1912, tram traffic was opened. In the summer of 1914, war broke into the measured working life of the Pskov province. In 1915, the front line was only 250-300 km from Pskov. Martial law was introduced in the city. Front-line reserve formations, hospitals and rear military services were located in Pskov. The city received tens of thousands of wounded, prisoners of war and refugees. By the end of 1917, the food problem became very acute, the city was sorely lacking bread.

On March 2, 1917, in the carriage of the royal train at the Pskov station, Emperor Nicholas II abdicated the throne.

 

Soviet period

Revolution and civil war
On October 26 (November 8), 1917, the Pskov Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies announced the establishment of Soviet power in Pskov. From October 28 (November 10) to November 1 (14), 1917, fierce battles were fought in the city between the Bolsheviks and the forces supporting the Provisional Government, after which the Soviet power in Pskov was finally established.

From February 25 to November 25, 1918, Pskov was occupied by German troops. From May 25 to August 26, 1919, Pskov was captured again - now by Estonian national units and detachments of S. N. Bulak-Balakhovich.

The Great Patriotic War
On June 22, 1941, the people of Pskov, like the whole country, were shocked by the news of the outbreak of war with Germany. But in the early days, people did not receive reliable information, so they believed that the enemy would be stopped and defeated at the western border. However, in the very first days, refugees from Belarus and the Baltic states arrived in Pskov, then the real state of affairs at the front at the beginning of the war became clear. From July 2, Pskov began to be bombed. On the very first day of the bombing, evacuation began: first of all, money, archives, industrial equipment were taken out of the city, and with the approach of the front, the evacuation of the civilian population began. On the night of July 7-8, the Germans managed to break through the resistance of the Soviet tank divisions and break through to the outskirts of Pskov in the Krestov area. The blown-up bridges across the Velikaya River delayed the occupiers for almost a day. July 9 Pskov was captured.

A harsh occupation regime was established in the city. The townspeople were now obliged to live according to German laws. Compulsory labor service was introduced for all persons from 18 to 45 years old, which was later extended to those who turned 15, and extended to 65 years for men and up to 45 years for women. The working day lasted 14-16 hours. Many of those who remained in the occupied territory worked at the power station, at the railway, at the peat extraction and at the tannery, being punished with rods for the slightest offense. In the initial period of the occupation, the German administration sought to preserve the collective organization of labor, which made it possible to centrally receive agricultural products. But, she met stubborn resistance in the form of sabotage, absenteeism, damage to cars. The economic robbery was accompanied by the implementation of the general plan "Ost", according to which part of the civilian population was subjected to destruction. A concentration camp was set up in Kresty, where 65,000 people were tortured to death.

Already in the first months of the occupation, small partisan detachments were organized. In 1942, there was an active formation of the partisan movement, scattered small partisan detachments were united. The partisans made a great contribution to the common Victory: they destroyed a significant number of enemy manpower and equipment, turned the occupied territory into a zone of constant danger; instilled uncertainty and fear in German soldiers and officers.

After the liberation of Ostrov on July 21, 1944, it became possible to encircle the Wehrmacht group in the Pskov region. A panicked retreat of the German troops began, which created favorable conditions for the offensive of the troops of the 42nd Army of the 3rd Baltic Front. The main blow to Pskov was delivered by the 128th and 376th rifle divisions with attached formations and units. On July 22, the 376th division began advancing towards Pskov, bypassing the Vauliny Gory (near the village of Vaulino), and in the area of ​​the village of Piskovichi reached the Velikaya River. On July 23, Pskov was liberated: already in the morning, the 376th division crossed the river in the area of the Pskov Kremlin and liberated the western part of the city, and the 128th division liberated its center and eastern part - from the Kremlin to Cheryokha. The crossing of the Velikaya River created the conditions for the liberation of Zavelichie and further advancement along the Pskov-Riga highway.

During the Nazi occupation in Pskov, all industrial enterprises were destroyed, most of the civil buildings were destroyed, all tram lines were lost, and Pskov museums were looted.

After the Great Patriotic War
In the first year after the liberation, Pskov was restored by forces mainly only by enthusiasts, since no money was allocated due to the ongoing war. In 1945, Pskov was included in the list of 15 ancient cities subject to priority restoration, which increased state funding for the restoration of enterprises, housing stock, historical and cultural monuments. Pskov quickly rose from the ruins. By 1950, the main stage of restoration work was completed. New businesses, houses and schools were built. Since the late 1950s, Pskov began to develop as a major industrial center. A number of high-tech industries were established in the city. The products of the Pskov factories were supplied abroad.

On September 26, 1958, the first birch bark was found in Pskov, dated by the linguist A. Zaliznyak to 1180-1200.

Modern period
With the collapse of the USSR, a large number of factories were closed, the city's economy fell into decay. At the same time, at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries, Pskov temples and churches began to revive, many of which were closed during the years of Soviet power.

 


Transportation

By plane
Air communication with Pskov fully reflects the problems of regional aviation in the European part of Russia. Five or six different airlines tried to launch regular flights to Moscow: none of them lasted more than a year. The local company Pskovavia has made more progress, however, it also lost its flight certificate in 2018. Instead, flights to Moscow and - since 2019 - to Sochi are operated by the Rostov airline Azimut on Superjet 100 aircraft.

Airport (IATA:PKV) , st. Herman, 34. Located within the city, on the southeastern outskirts. From the center, any transport is suitable, following along Oktyabrsky Prospekt and Krestovsky Highway to the Aeroport stop. Further 5 minutes on foot, and you are at the goal. On the building from the side of the airfield there is an inscription "City of Military Glory": the presence of military aviation affects, which mainly uses the airfield.

By train
Pskov is a junction station, but there are few trains here: a daily night train from Moscow (13 hours on the way, branded, tickets are very expensive). A couple of times a week, a strange mail and luggage train runs through Velikiye Luki, then arriving in Moscow at the Rizhsky railway station. From St. Petersburg you can take the high-speed train "Lastochka" (3 pairs a day, travel time 3.5 hours), which follows from Luga on diesel traction, as well as the daily evening train St. Petersburg-Luga-Pskov with a 12-minute transfer in Luga by diesel train (about 4 hours on the way, which is even faster than minibuses) and by a sit-down weekend train (on Friday evening to Pskov, on Sunday evening back).

Suburban communication has been preserved in the directions to Porkhov-Dno and Luga, twice a day.

Railway station , Vokzalnaya st. 23. It is located 2.5 km southeast of the center of Pskov: almost all city transport comes here, although nothing prevents walking along Oktyabrsky Prospekt or Jan Fabricius Street. Pskov railway station is one of the oldest in Russia. It was built in 1863 and has hardly changed since then. It was in Pskov, at this very station on March 2, 1917, that Emperor Nicholas II signed the abdication of the throne, which is reminded by a memorial plaque and even a special chapel on the station square. Inside there is a small waiting room and long-distance ticket offices. Tickets for suburban trains are sold in the booth to the left of the building. You can buy them on the train from the conductor, but with a small extra charge. Except for the moments of arrival or departure of the Moscow train, the station is empty.

By bus
Buses to St. Petersburg leave every hour, mostly passing. On the way 4-5 hours. Numerous private carriers operate on the same route - for example, Avtograf: in St. Petersburg they depart from the Chernyshevsky monument ( 2 (Moscow-Petrogradskaya) line Pobedy Park, opposite the Rossiya Hotel; Chernyshevsky Square, 11) and from the Pulkovskaya Park Inn Hotel ( 2 (Moskovsko-Petrogradskaya) Moskovskaya Line; Pobedy Square, 1), travel time 4 hours. Please note that minibuses require prior booking.

Daily night bus to Moscow (15 hours), 2 buses a day to Novgorod (4 hours), quite a lot of buses in a southerly direction - to Nevel (5 hours), Velikiye Luki (6 hours) and even to Belarusian Vitebsk (6 hours). 8 hours). If you are going to the Baltics, then two daily buses to Estonia are at your service - one to Tallinn (7 hours), the other to Narva (7 hours), both through Tartu - one or two buses to Riga (6 hours) and not very regular flight to Aluksne. Buses St. Petersburg-Riga, with the exception of the Ecolines night bus, do not pass through Pskov.
Bus station  Wikidata item, Vokzalnaya st. 21. ☎ +7 (8112) 75-21-10. A small building with ticket offices and a waiting room 100 m south of the railway station.

By car
Federal highways passing through Pskov:
Highway A212 E77 Connects Pskov with Latvia.
Highway P60 Connects Pskov with Estonia through the highway M11 E20 "Narva" (turn in Kingisepp) and Gdov.
Highway M20 E95 St. Petersburg - Odessa. Connects Pskov with St. Petersburg, Gatchina, Luga, Ostrov, Opochka, Pustoshka, Nevel, Vitebsk, Orsha, Mogilev, Gomel, Chernigov, Kiev, Uman and Odessa.
Pskov is connected with Moscow via the M9 E22 "Baltija" highway (Novorizhskoye Highway), which crosses the M20 E95 highway near the town of Pustoshka.

On the ship
There is no passenger navigation along the Great.

 

Transport

Public transport
The only type of public transport in Pskov is the bus. Thanks to a large fleet of cars, buses run at short intervals, which makes it easy to move around the city. One of the final stops of all city routes is the railway station, next to which the bus station is located. The fare is 25 rubles (2019). There is a rather crooked, but working route planner.

Most of the objects of interest to the traveler are concentrated in the city center and it is convenient to move between them on foot. You can get to Snyatnaya Gora by bus number 1, the route of which starts from the railway station and passes through the city center, in particular, through Sovetskaya Square (stop right in front of the Kremlin).

Taxi
At least the Yandex.Taxi application works in the city.

 

Consulates

Estonia Estonia (Pskov office of the General Consulate of Estonia), Narodnaya street, 25, ☎ +7 8112 725-380, fax: +7 (8112) 725-381, e-mail: Consulate.Pskov@mfa.ee.
Latvia Latvia, Narodnaya street, 25, ☎ +7 8112 720-237, +7 8112 741-052, fax: +7 (8112) 724-056, e-mail: consulate.pskov@mfa.gov.lv. Mon-Fri, 9-30AM - 4PM.
Netherlands Netherlands (Representation at the Consulate of Estonia), Narodnaya street, 25, ☎ +7 8112 725-380, fax: +7 (8112) 725-381, e-mail: Consulate.Pskov@mfa.ee

Visa Centers
France Slovenia France and Slovenia (French and Slovenian visa service provided by the Consulate of Latvia), Narodnaya street, 25, ☎ +7 8112 720-237, +7 8112 741-052, fax: +7 (8112) 724-056, e-mail: consulate.pskov@mfa.gov.lv. Mon-Fri, 9-30AM - 4PM.