Makaryev is a small historical town in the southeast of the Kostroma region, primarily notable for its ancient monastery.
The basis of the Makaryevsky Museum of Local Lore was the local
history circle at the House of Pioneers. The leader and founder was
local historian Alexey Shmakov. In March 1959, the museum received
official status, and in 1969 it became a branch of the Kostroma
Museum-Reserve. By this time, almost one and a half thousand different
exhibits had been collected. In 1971, the St. Nicholas Gate Church of
the Makaryevsky Monastery was given over to the museum. Today the museum
contains archaeological finds, photographs and postcards with views of
the city, various materials on the life of the townspeople, various
crafts that existed in the region; There is a collection of forged
nails, irons and coins. A small nature department has been created.
Since 2019, it has ceased to be part of the branches of the Kostroma
Museum-Reserve.
There is a cinema in the city called Abri.
According to tradition, at the end of winter there is a race in felt
boots, called the “Makaryevskaya Versta”. The rules of these
competitions are simple, as are the shoes to which they are dedicated:
from start to finish - one mile (1076 m). The route runs around the
Makaryev-Unzhensky Monastery.
Romanovsky Procession. For the
first time, Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich Romanov with the royal retinue of
princes and boyars and the clergy passed this way in 1619 on October 14
(October 1, Art. Style), on the day of the Feast of the Intercession of
the Mother of God. The religious procession was established according to
a special royal vow in gratitude for the intercession of the Mother of
God and the intercession of the Monk Macarius of Zheltovodsk and the
Wonderworker of Unzhensk, for the accession to the kingdom of the
Romanov dynasty and overcoming the Time of Troubles in Russia, the
release from Polish captivity of the Patriarch of All Rus' Filaret -
Father Mikhail Fedorovich. In 2012, on October 14, on the Feast of the
Intercession of the Mother of God, a group of six enthusiasts walked
along the route of the Royal Procession of the Cross of 1619, making the
second Procession of the Cross along this route.
On July 14,
2018, a bicycle ride took place to the Makariyevo-Unzhensky Monastery
from the village of Krasnogorye from the Church of the Transfiguration
of the Lord, in which more than 50 people took part. 2019 marks the
400th anniversary of the first Romanov Procession of the Cross.
Approved in 1781 and slightly revised in 1802 after a fire that
destroyed the city to the ground, Makaryev’s general plan in many ways
repeated the layout of Kostroma.
The compositional center of the
plan was a large semicircular square, open towards Unzhi, radial
highways diverged from it, covered by a concentric highway and a rampart
around the city. This ideal scheme was somewhat violated by the features
of the relief of the western part of Makaryev, riddled with ravines. The
ravines separated the southern coastal part, where the monastery and the
administrative center of the city were located, from the rest of its
territory. The central square was assigned the function of a shopping
center. It was supposed to have a stone perimeter building with a large
building of the Gostiny Dvor in the center. The implementation of the
regular plan was helped by the great fire of 1803. Religious buildings
in the eastern part of the Unzha River embankment play a large role in
creating the silhouette of Makaryev. The main attraction of Makaryev is
the Makaryev-Unzhensky Monastery. One of the main events in the life of
the monastery was the visit of the future Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich in
1612.
The Tikhvin Cathedral in the city center, also known as the
Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, is slightly inferior to it in importance.
Other attractions of the city are the government building, erected
in 1806. The two-story brick building in the classicist style was built
according to the design of the architect Andreyan Zakharov. In 1867, the
city government and fire station buildings were built in the classicist
style. In 1888, a guest house was built (at the beginning of the 21st
century, only a fragment of the western part remained of it), in the
first half of the 19th century, the Zubkov restaurant and hotel
appeared, in the second half of the 19th - early 20th centuries, trading
shops and residential buildings with shops on lower floor. The sights of
the city are the building of the noble assembly in the eclectic style,
the Nemkov house, residential building No. 30, the Tyrichev house, the
Troitsky house, built in 1906 and completing the formation of the
ensemble of the center. Within the city there is the building of the
vocational school named after F.V. Chizhov, built in 1890, the buildings
of a real school, the building of a religious school and the building of
a zemstvo hospital. The original planning structure and historical
buildings of the city, dating back to the 19th - early 20th centuries,
have been well preserved. Of great interest is the integral development
of the central square, Bolshaya and Malaya Sovetskikh, Ploshchadnaya,
Yuryevetskaya, Verkhne-Naberezhnaya streets, etc., including religious,
civil and residential buildings.
Several buses a day from Kostroma (with terminals in the cities and
towns of the north-east of the region), the journey takes 3-3.5 hours.
In the eastern direction, most of these buses reach at least the city of
Manturovo with a station of the same name on the Trans-Siberian Railway
(the journey takes 1-1.5 hours ).
By car: Makaryev is located on
the federal highway P243 Kostroma-Sharya-Kirov, 180 km from Kostroma and
140 km from Sharya.
Bus station, Pervomaiskaya street, exit from
the city (on the highway, 1 km from Revolution Square and 1.5 km from
the monastery). The bus station itself is closed (buses stop nearby),
only the toilet is open.
There is no city transport. Taxi drivers gather on the western side of Revolution Square (at the beginning of Malaya Sovetskaya Street)
The roadside infrastructure (food and hotels) in this area is much
better developed than the city infrastructure: if you are traveling by
car, you should pay attention to the cafes and hotels on the highway.
1 Dining room “Vkuslandiya”, pl. Revolution, 31. An ordinary
provincial canteen.
2 Dining room No. 22, st. Yu. Smirnova, 4.
3 Cafe “At the Fireplace” (Kostroma-Kirov highway, at the gas station
immediately after leaving the city towards Manturov). Roadside cafe with
good reviews.
1 Hotel “Zarya” , Bolshaya Sovetskaya st., 11. ☎ +7 (49445)
5-51-11, +7 (920) 382-94-24.
2 Hotel “Inn”, st. Malaya Sovetskaya,
29. ☎ +7 (49445) 5-65-46, +7 (910) 806-35-75.
3 Guest house, st.
Malaya Sovetskaya, 22. ☎ +7 (920) 387-64-65.
4 Recreation center
“Annitsa” , village. Selishche. ☎ +7 (920) 384-50-93, +7 (910)
660-67-18.
Makaryev is located in the southeastern part of the Kostroma region,
in the lower reaches of the Unzha River, on its right bank. The distance
from the regional center - Kostroma - 186 km, from the Neya railway
station (on the Bui - Kotelnich line) - 53 km, from the Manturovo
railway station - 76 km.
The city is located on a hilly plain in
the Unzhenskaya lowland, stretching from north to south along Unzha. The
lowland has an average height of 150 m above sea level, abounds in
lakes, oxbow lakes, swamps, and is cut by ravines.
In distant
times of the Earth's history, the territory on which the city is located
today was the bottom of a shallow sea, so in many places near the city
there are clays, limestones, sandstones, and in some places on the
shores of the city you can find ancient fossils, mainly the shells of
ammonites and belemnites.
In 1439, the Monk Macarius of Unzhensky and Zheltovodsky founded a
monastery on the Unzha River, which over time turned into a large
monastery known as Makarievo-Unzhensky. The settlement of Makaryevskaya,
which grew up under him, on Unzha in 1778 was transformed into a city in
the Unzhenskaya region of the Kostroma governorship, which was named
Makaryev-on-Unzhe (from the end of the 19th century - Makaryev). Since
1779 - the center of the Unzhenskaya province of the Kostroma
governorate, since 1797 - the district city of the Kostroma province.
In 1994, P. G. Inyagin for the first time conducted reconnaissance
archaeological studies of the cultural layer of Makariev. Based on the
results of the work, it was concluded that the oldest part of the city
was located within the “monastery” hill. Approximate stages of
development: a) Slavic settlement of the 14th-15th centuries, here are
finds of Late Bulgarian ceramics of the late 13th - early 14th
centuries. Since the 14th century - the emergence of the village of
Makarovo on the basis of the settlement; b) the development of the
village before and after the emergence of the monastery; by 1779 - the
actual merger of the established Podmonastyrskaya settlement, villages
and repairs that were owned by the monastery, the formation of a city;
c) development of the monastery (since 1444). Formation of a submonastic
settlement. The largest amount of material from the 15th to the 17th
centuries is a period of significant upsurge and growth of the
monastery. In the 18th century, the main stone construction was actually
completed.
In 2012 and 2016, archaeological work in Makaryev was
carried out by the Kostroma archaeological expedition. Excavations were
carried out on the northern outskirts of the cultural layer of the
settlement of the Makarievo-Unzhensky Monastery, which had formed at the
time of redevelopment on a regular basis. Excavations were laid on
Malaya Sovetskaya Street (part of the former Dvoryanskaya Street) - in
2012, 64 m² at house No. 14 and in 2016, 48 m² at house No. 4. In 2012,
exploration work was also carried out during construction at
Ploshchadnaya Street, 2. The development of new territories was noted,
synchronous with the stone construction in the monastery in the second
half of the 17th century, the originality of ceramic ware, which was
leveled off only in the 19th century with the inclusion in the system of
Russian trade and the beginning of large fairs, the features of the
layout of the settlement before the redevelopment of 1781 (the presence
of free areas between individual parts of the settlement).
In the
19th century, Makaryev was famous for its trade fairs, which were held
in winter (Epiphany), spring (Blagoveshchenskaya) and summer
(Ilyinskaya).
In Makarievo, the craft of making felt boots was
developed; the Makarievo pimokats spoke their own secret language -
Zhgon.
The city burned repeatedly. After a major fire in 1802, it
was built up according to a regular (“star”) plan - like Kostroma.
In 1856, in the county town of Makaryev-on-Unzha, there were three
churches, 553 houses, and 33 shops.