Kremlin wall and skyscrapers in Moscow
Four great cities—Kiev (now Kyiv), Novgorod, Moscow, and St. Petersburg—have given the country that became Russia much of its character. Historian George E. Munro explores their history, culture, and signature sites. He shows how they exercised power, celebrated religion, and fostered trade while pursuing a singular path into the present.
9:30–10:45 a.m. Kiev: City of Legends and Mystery
A brilliant outpost of Byzantium’s rich culture and mother city to both Ukraine and Russia, Kiev was drawn into Moscow’s growing empire for three and a half centuries. Today, as Kyiv, the capital of an independent Ukraine, its marvels include the Golden Gate, St. Sophia Cathedral, the Caves Monastery, and the its most famous and busiest boulevard, the Kreshchatik (Kreshchatyk).
11 a.m.–12:15 p.m. Lord Novgorod the Great
Sitting astride the Volkhov River, Novgorod once controlled commerce in furs and forest products halfway across Asia. The city’s many patrician families endowed churches that vied with one another in architectural magnificence, and the first Russian state, then called Rus’, was founded here in A.D. 862. Novgorod’s St. Sophia Cathedral is a five-domed, stone cathedral built by Vladimir of Novgorod between 1045 and 1050–making it the oldest church building in Russia proper.
12:15–1:30 p.m. Lunch (participants provide their own)
1:30–2:45 p.m. Moscow: Mother of Modern Russia
With the Kremlin at its heart, wall fragments of earlier city walls and shaded boulevards radiate outward, marking Moscow’s growth in concentric rings. The city is the repository of all that is most Russian. St. Basil’s Cathedral is still dazzling 500 years after its construction. The Cathedral of Christ the Savior, erected to honor the victory over Napoleon in 1812 and destroyed by the Bolsheviks in the 1930s, was rebuilt in the 1990s. Today Moscow is a model socialist city with broad avenues and soaring buildings.
3–4:15 p.m. St. Petersburg; City of Palaces and Empire
From the azure of Rastelli’s Smolny Institute in the half-light of a summer midnight, to the ice-encrusted caryatids bearing the weight of the Hermitage Museum in the brief December light, St. Petersburg, with its magnificent squares and river vistas, is one of Europe’s most magical cities. It has risen like a phoenix from the ashes of revolution and war. Today, it is Russia’s second-largest city.
Munro, an expert in Russian history and culture, is a professor of history at Virginia Commonwealth University.
