Fabulously ancient and wonderfully adorned, the town of Suzdal occupies a special place among the other Russian cities. The entire town is a museum where over one hundred monuments, dating from different periods, are clustered. But the fact, that Suzdal is now a museum, has not deprived it of vigorous life typical of a Russian provincial town. Another remarkable feature of Suzdal is the perfect harmony of its architecture with wonderful, eternal nature. A day, you spend here, purifies not only your lungs but even your thoughts. Suzdal's name figures in the annals for the first time in 1024, but excavations have proved the fact, that the Rostov-Suzdal Principality had already existed before that on the fertile soil of this area. At the end of the 11th century Suzdal came under the rule of Vladimir Monomakh and later of his son, Yuriy Dolgoruky, the founder of Moscow and some other cities. In the middle of the 12th century Yuriy Dolgoruky made Suzdal the capital of the principality and built his residence in the village of Kideksha. The Church of Saint Boris and Saint Gleb, which has survived up to now there, was the first of all the white stone edifices to be built later. By the middle12th century Suzdal was the capital of the principality with its Kremlin and a fortified posad (i.e., a settlement of traders and artisans). In the 1150s Andrei Bogolyubsky moved the capital to Vladimir, and Suzdal became a town in which agriculture and trade were developed. Even in the 14th century, when the Suzdal-Nizhny Novgorod Principality was established to resist subordination to Moscow, Suzdal did not regain its political importance, remaining one of the religious centres of the Russian state. Although the population of the town was relatively small, there were an enormous number of Churches and a lot of monasteries in Suzdal. The oldest architectural ensemble of the town is the Kremlin , which consists of the ancient white stone Cathedral of the Nativity of the Virgin (1225), decorated with carvings, the vast complex of the Archbishop's Chambers (15th - 17th centuries), and the bell tower (1635), connected to the Palace by a gallery. Not far from the Kremlin there is the posad with a well-integrated complex of Church and secular buildings of different epochs and styles. On the outskirts of the town a Museum of Wooden Architecture has been established by collecting here wooden structures, typical of Russia, from all over the region. Around the town on the banks of the quiet Kamenka several monasteries form a ring of fortresses. Among them there are: the austere and expressive Monastery of Our Saviour and Saint Euthimius; the lyrical and intimate Convent of the Intercession; the chivalrous Monastery of Saint Alexander and some others. Each of the monasteries is connected with outstanding people and events in the history of Russia. Suzdal is a unique town because nowhere is the flavour of the past so clearly present as here. That is why the town is dearly loved by artists and cinematographers. Everyone can enjoy visiting Suzdal with its numerous museums and wonderful architecture and admire the beauties of this unique town, which is often called a "town from a Russian fairy-tale".
The road from Vladimir to Suzdal is slightly undulating. In a hollow on the left is the village of Sukhodol (literally - dry low-lying area). Beyond it the ground rises again, and looking back at Vladimir from this point you can see the whole town stretched out below with its impressive group of Cathedrals standing out prominently against the hazy background. Early one morning in 1177 the city regiments of Vsevolod III marched along this road to wage battle against the boyars of Suzdal and Rostov. The chronicler wrote what when they had passed Sukhodol they saw "the holy Virgin", "as if in the heavens" and "the whole of the town to its very foundations". The hills would have been still swathed in mist, with the Assumption Cathedral shining in the early sun as if it were hovering above a sea of clouds.
Further on, about halfway between Vladimir and Suzdal, lies the large village of Borisovskoye, one of the oldest in these parts. It belonged at one time to the Moscow prince Ivan Kalita who left it to his son Simon the Proud. The tiny stream here has retained its Finnish name of Ikishka, dating back to the time before Russian settlers appeared in these parts.
More and more fields pass by until the village of Batiyevo appears on the right. "The Suzdal history collection" by Ananiya Fyodorov, tells us that the Mongol Khan Batiy pitched camp on this spot on his way to Suzdal.
A few more bends in the road and we come to the village of Pavlovskoye, which is even older than Borisovskoye. It was bought by the wife of Alexander Nevsky, meaning that it must have existed in the thirteenth century and survived the Mongol invasion.
A little further on Suzdal comes into sight quite unexpectedly from the top of Poklonnaya hill (literally - worship mountain). The town lies on an elongated piece of high ground surrounded by fields and forest stretching as far as the eye can see. As we get nearer we can gradually make out the different groups of buildings: the Kremlin with its white Cathedral and bell-tower, the huge pink walls and towers of the Spaso-Yevfimiev Monastery, and the slender bell-tower of the Convent of the Deposition of the Robe.
To the right on the sloping meadows along the little river Mzhara we can see a large number of small burial mounds, for this was Suzdal's cemetery in the early days. Under these mounds are buried the people who lived in Suzdal in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries at the time of Yuriy Dolgoruky and his grandson George Vsevolodovich and built the town's ancient ramparts and beautiful Cathedral.
Although the proud Suzdal boyars held that their town, the bastion of their power and source of their wealth, was older than Vladimir, the two towns actually appeared about the same time. Suzdal grew up on the fertile arable land which attracted Russian settlers to these parts who founded many villages here in the tenth and eleventh centuries. A number of these old settlements, which abounded along the banks of the Kamenka (literally - stone, stony, rocky), a tributary of the Nerl, formed the basis of what was later to become the town of Suzdal. Traces of them have been found during excavations on the site of the Suzdal Kremlin and elsewhere. The peasants who came here from the Smolensk and Novgorod areas in search of land and a free life did not enjoy these blessings for long: here, too, they and their lands quickly fell into the hands of rich men, themselves formerly peasants, who helped the tribute-collectors from the Kievan princes.
As early as 1024 there was a peasant uprising "throughout these lands" led by the pagan priests, against those who were attempting to impose a feudal order on this previously free community. The extent of this rebellion was so great that the Grand Prince Yaroslav the Wise came in person to suppress it with his men. The name of Suzdal occurs for the first time in the account of this event. It is, however, clear from the account that Suzdal referred to an area rather than an actual town.
In 1054 the lands of Rostov and Suzdal became part of the possessions of Prince Vsevolod II, the son of Yaroslav the Wise, and this brought an increasing number of boyars from the south who deprived the hitherto free peasants of their land and liberty. The Prince's men-at-arms began to settle in the area and soon afterwards the Church started to establish its authority there. A bishopric was established in Rostov, but at the beginning of the 1070s a new, even stronger wave of popular uprisings broke out over the whole of the Volga region right up to the area around lake Beloye (literally - White lake) in the north, during the course of which the first bishop of Rostov, Leontios, was killed.
Shortly afterwards, at the end of the eleventh century, the first wave of bitter internecine struggles broke out between the feudal princes for possession of the rich northeast lands which had been allotted to Vladimir Monomach. By that time Suzdal already possessed a royal residence. Prince Oleg forced his way into Suzdal from the Klyazma, which was still unfortified, and set fire to the "town" (i.e., the wooden fortifications). All that survived on the other side of the river Kamenka was the residence for visitors from the Pechersky Monastery (monastery of the Caves) in Kiev and its wooden Church of Saint Demetrios.
These events accelerated the transformation of the small settlements along the river Kamenka into a fortified town. It was placed at a sharp bend in the river where the population was most dense. A deep moat was cut across the isthmus turning the river loop into an island, the edges of which were fortified with earth ramparts topped by wooden walls.
We do not know the exact date when the fortress was built, but it was evidently at the very end of the twelfth century when Vladimir Monomach erected the first non-wooden buildings in the northeast lands here - the large brick Cathedral of the Assumption and the royal residence beside it. Suzdal also appears to have been the capital of the lands ruled over by Vladimir Monomach's son, Yuriy Dolgoruky. It was visited by envoys and merchants and attacked by hostile armies (in 1107 the Volga Bulgars were put to flight beneath the walls of the fortress).
The new fortress was heavily populated. The ordinary townsfolk lived in dug-outs (zemlyanka) with roofs raised above ground level. Among these hovels rose the timbered mansions of the rich inhabitants, and the whole fortress was dominated by the Cathedral and the royal residence, which must have seemed very imposing in comparison with the other dwellings.
The fortress had three gates (may be it was three travel towers too). There are: Ilya gates;
The posad grew up gradually outside the Ilya gates in the eastern ramparts, bounded on the east by the small river Gremyachka (literally - rattling river). On the high bank where the Gremyachka joined the Kamenka in twelfth century stood a Monastery dedicated to Saint Cosmas and Saint Damian. The north side of the posad was protected by an artificial moat (Neteka (literally - not having flow, currents)) which almost joined the Kamenka with the Gremyachka. It is possible, before the Mongol invasion the posad, which covered an area twice that of the fortress, was surrounded by earth ramparts with a very strong timber stockade containing three main gates. In 1207 the Convent of the Deposition of the Robe was erected outside the northern gates. The second entrance led to the source of the Gremyachka, and through the southern gates passed the road to Yuriy Dolgoruky's residence in the village of Kideksha, where a fortified castle with its own white stone Church was erected in 1152 near the mouth of the Kamenka only a few years before Andrei Bogolyubsky built a similar castle at Bogolyubovo.
Many of Suzdal's old buildings are concentrated around the area which used to be the central square and market place of the posad. We have already described where the wooden Churches of this part of the town were located in the seventeenth century, some of them grouped by the gates and others lining the market place. In most cases the existing stone Churches stand on the site of earlier wooden ones and date back to the eight-eenth century, some to the seventeenth. Even with so many buildings of the same type the Suzdal builders managed to avoid repetition, and each Church has its own individual character with regard to general composition and decoration.
The growing power of the prince presented a serious challenge to the rich boyars of Suzdal, but a third force was also beginning to emerge in the form of the ordinary townspeople. After Prince Andrei Bogolyubsky was killed by the boyars in 1174, the townspeople supported his successors in their struggle against the boyars.
During the reign of Vsevolod III and his successor George the town was refortified (1192) and the old Cathedral built by Vladimir Monomach was first repaired and subsequently completely rebuilt (1222-1225). This building shows very clear traces of styles and traditions which heralded the subsequent flowering of the arts in the Vladimir lands.
In february 1238 Suzdal was captured and burnt by the mongols, but the town managed to survive this disaster and by 1262 its inhabitants were able to support an heroic, but futile uprising against the invaders by the towns of northeast Russia. A number of new monasteries grew up around the town in the thirteenth century. The Trinity Monastery was founded in the north not far from the Convent of the Deposition of the Robe. On the high bank of the Kamenka in the northwest the Monastery of Saint Alexander appeared, traditionally associated with the name of Saint Grand Duke Alexander Nevsky. Then there was the Monastery of the Presentation in the south on a bend in the river Mzhara and the Monastery of Saint Vasiliy in the east on the Kamenka. This increased number of monasteries shows that even after being devastated by the mongols the arable land around Suzdal was still rich.
Suzdal grew in importance in the fourteenth century, when the Suzdal-Nizhny Novgorod principality enjoyed a brief period of power. The capital of the principality was the rich town of Nizhniy Novgorod on the Volga, but Suzdal also continued to expand and acquire new buildings. In the middle of the fourteenth century the Nizhniy Novgorod princes Boris and Andrei founded the Convent of the Intercession on the low-lying right bank of the Kamenka and the Monastery of Our Saviour on the steep left bank immediately opposite. The latter was subsequently renamed Spaso-Efimiev after its first abbot Efimy was glorified. Both of them reinforced the town's northern defences.
None of their original buildings has survived, since they were constructed entirely of wood. However they did mark the extreme limits of the town, beyond which it has hardly spread to this very day, and also provided sites for the splendid architectural ensembles erected in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
A few isolated facts suggest that the cultural life of the town revived somewhat in the fourteenth century. In 1377 the famous "Laurentian chronicle" was compiled by the monk Lavrenty at the order of Dionisy, bishop of Suzdal and Nizhniy Novgorod, who also had icons and other precious objects brought from Constantinople to Suzdal. In 1383 he commissioned a magnificent canopy richly decorated with niello work, enamel and gold. Specimens of icons from the Suzdal monasteries show this art to have been highly developed, drawing on the traditions of the pre-mongol period and making an important contribution to the flourishing art of Russia in fourteenth and fifteenth century.
After the collapse of the Suzdal-Nizhny Novgorod principality in 1392 Suzdal ceased to play an active political role and entered a period of decline. The old Cathedral collapsed in 1445 and was allowed to stand in ruins for more than eighty years.
Lying off the main trade routes, the town with its many monasteries retained importance only as a religious centre which, together with Vladimir, had contributed a great deal to the cultural and political traditions of the new Russian capital Moscow.
During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the monasteries were richly endowed with land by the Moscow rulers and nobility. Their (monasteries) possessions encircled the town on all sides. Large stretches of land on the outskirts were named after the monasteries: Demetrios side; Boris side; Andrei side and so on. Their sacristies became full of precious jewelry and metal-work which are the pride of many a museum today. As early as the first half of the sixteenth century large stone buildings were erected in the Intercession Convent, the Deposition of the Virgin Mary Robe Convent and the Spaso-Yevfimiev Monastery. This revival of stone architecture in Suzdal was a reflection not only of the growing wealth of the monasteries, but of the increasing importance of towns and urban trades in general, including building. Moscow builders came to Suzdal and set up a brick-kiln on the banks of the Kamenka instructing the local builders in the making and use of brick. The town's sixteenth-century architecture demonstrates an original fusion of Muscovite and old Suzdalian styles.
Its importance as a religious centre was increased by the fact that it became the centre of the rich Suzdal bishopric in the fourteenth century, which was turned into an archbishopric at the end of the sixteenth. The bishop's residence and a new episcopal stone Church stood in the Kremlin next to the rebuilt Cathedral.
During the sixteenth century urban dwellings spread out to the west of the Kremlin on the opposite side of the Kamenka where there were a number of monasteries. The Kremlin itself now had fifteen towers and seven wooden Churches, five of which stood along the eastern ramparts. Together with the Cathedral, which still remained the town's largest building, the tent-shaped spires of the fortress towers and the tall silhouettes of the wooden Churches formed the architectural center, heart of the town.
Inside the ramparts of the posad there were another fourteen wooden Churches concentrated mainly in the centre. There were five Churches almost in a row on the market place. Two more stood at the north gates, two
at the east gates, and groups of two and three by the Ilya gates, leading into the Kremlin.
In addition to these buildings of the Kremlin and the posad there were the monasteries around the town with their twenty-seven Churches. But, for instance, in 1573 Suzdal possessed only 414 homesteads! No other old Russian town had such a high proportion of Church buildings.
Suzdal suffered heavily during the polish-lithuanian invasion of 1608-1610 which left only 78 homesteads in the posad. In 1634 the Crimean Tartars looted the town, and in 1644 the section of the posad adjoining the Kremlin was completely destroyed by fire. Additionally, in 1654-1655, half the town's population of 2467 was wiped out by the epidemic deathes.
In spite of this poverty and stagnation a new phase of building started in the 1630s. Not surprisingly this was initiated mainly by the bishop and the monasteries using their vast resources of wealth and unpaid serf labour, but the townspeople in the posad also began to erect their own buildings. During the seventeenth century the magnificent stone buildings of the mighty bell-tower and huge Archbishop's Chambers were erected near the Kremlin Cathedral. In 1645 a Moscow architect Nikifor Beklemishev managed construction of new Kremlin walls and towers. The Suzdal monasteries also built new stone Churches and walls which now rivalled the town's old architectural centre - the Kremlin. In the posad and the settlements outside the town the wooden Churches were replaced by stone ones. This remarkable spate of building kept the brick-makers busy at their kilns on the clay banks of the Kamenka. It saw the emergence of the highly talented local architects, Ivan Mamin, Ivan Gryaznov and Andrei Shmakov, who erected some real architectural masterpieces at the end of the seventeenth century. In spite of all this, however, the town itself remained a poor small wooden one which consisted of only 540 homesteads in 1711.
In 1719 Suzdal was again destroyed by fire and shortly afterwards another attack of the epidemic deathes once more wiped out half its population. In 1767 the Spaso-Efimiev Monastery was turned into a large prison for religious and political offenders, that "cast out a dark shadow" on the town name.
The state reforms introduced by Peter the Great undermined the economic power of the Church and the monasteries and at the end of the century the Suzdal bishopric was abolished.
Instead of building ceasing, as one might have expected, it was carried on by the Suzdal merchants although, according to contemporary records, this was only on "a moderately rich even rather poor" scale. The eighteenth century witnessed the building of many Churches rival those of the preceding two centuries in their beauty and craftsmanship. They were erected on the sites of former wooden Churches, thus preserving the town's architectural topography. In style and spirit they reflected the old Suzdalian architectural traditions with a barely perceptible admixture of eighteenth-century features.
The old layout of the town with its long main street that formed part of the road to Pereslavl-Zalessky, Rostov and Yaroslavl, and few side streets was little changed by the 1788 plan for making the town "more symmetrical". Some of the streets were slightly straightened, but the proposed new areas were never actually built and the town did not expand.
The Suzdalian school of icon painting flourished in the eighteenth century. It included such gifted artists as Babookhin, Rodionov, Popov, Gorshkov, Ionin and so on, whose icons spread to other regions, winning the inhabitants of Suzdal the popular name of "Suzdal God-painters".
The history of Suzdal began to attract the interest of historians as early as the eighteenth century when the local sexton of the Cathedral, Ananiya Fyodorov, compiled his famous "History of the Suzdal Town" which was later added to by works of other local historians.
The town did not acquire any new buildings of architectural value during the nineteenth century. Its first stone civic building, a large covered market, was erected between 1806-1811. To commemorate the victory over Napoleon a bell-tower in classical style was built between 1813-1819 on an elevated piece of ground in the Convent of the Deposition of the Robe. Opposite the Convent a Suzdal merchant by the name of Blokhin erected an almshouse in provincial classical style.
The agricultural character of the town had changed little over the past eight centuries. Most of its inhabitants were engaged in horticulture and gardening.
The Suzdal of today is a veritable open-air museum attracting large numbers of tourists from far and wide. No other town contains many splendid specimens of Russian architecture in almost all its stages, whilst retaining its original character and appearance.

The review of monuments of Suzdal should be begun with the Kremlin. There from the central square conducts the street Kremliovskaya. This street crosses the well-preserved moat on the east side of the old fortress, from 100 to 115 feet wide, and the earth ramparts. Its green slopes covered with old trees reach a height of 55 feet from the bottom of the ditch and their total perimeter is 1,530 yards. The main entrance tower of the fortress, the wooden Elijah's Gates (Iliinskie vorota), formerly stood on this spot adjoined by the wooden walls running along the top of the earth ramparts. This east side of the fortress originally looked out on to a flat plain or, as they used to say in the old days, the "assailable" side, and because of this it was particularly well fortified. The southwest Demetrios Gates (Dmitrievskie vorota) led to the old Monastery of Saint Demetrios across the river Kamenka, and the southeast Nicholas Gates (Nikolskie vorota) to another bridge over the river Kamenka.