127 km from Moscow, 41,000 inhabitants. The area, very hilly, is dotted with hills traditionally called the hills of Salvation. Each Russian city had its own, from the top of which the travelers, as soon as they perceived the city, bowed to salute it and made the same gesture after having left it. Pereslavl has two hills of Salvation, one to the south, on the Moscow side, the other to the north.
From the top of the first, in good weather, we can see, to the northeast of Lake Plescheyevo ("lapping lake"), a hill different from the others, with a conical top: its last ten meters were thus cut by pagan Slavs. in honor of the god Jarilo symbolizing the sun. The place is called "Baldness of Jarilo", because the snow disappears there earlier than on the neighboring hills.

At the foot of this hill, a huge rock weighing four tons was carried to the lake by ancient glaciers. Its dimensions and its dark blue color attracted, in the 8th and 9th centuries, the attention of the pagan Finno-Ugric tribes (the Méries) who inhabited the region; the rock became their divinity, to which they sacrificed animals.
The Slavs, who appeared here in the 9th century, made this their belief and began decorating the rock with flowers and ribbons and dancing around in circles. These pagan demonstrations have always displeased the Christian clergy who, until the end of the eighteenth century, failed to ban them and envied their success, as shown by a text of the time: "Ilyadanslavillede Pereslavl a large stone, inhabited by a demon of dreams, which brings people from Pereslavl on the very day of Saints Peter and Paul. And these people, men, women and children, come to worship him. If there is a dancer or a musician who invites to play or to dance, everyone goes there joy in the heart, (whereas) if one calls to the church, one yawns, one says: it rains, he is cold. "
The people were indeed more willing to attend pagan festivals (whether in the open air and in the middle of winter), to sing and dance, than to church.
At the beginning of the 17th century, a monk from Rostov, Irinarkh, famous for his piety, ordered to dig the ground to bury the rock. He remained well hidden all winter, much to the delight of the clergy. This joy, however, was short-lived: in the spring, the stone reappeared before the admiring adorers.

Pereslavl has a special atmosphere that can not be found in any other city in central Russia: hundreds of kilometers from the sea, it breathes the atmosphere of the port cities. There are fishermen with wind-tanned faces, wearing high boots, or boys in sailors' shirts. It is with the Troubèje river, bordered by weeping willows, and the immense lake of Plescheïevo, the water is omnipresent. At the edge of the river, in the "fishermen's village", live the descendants of those who fished the "herring of Pereslavl" for the court of the Russian tsars, enjoying many privileges: they were freed from military service and pardoned for everything crime except murder. If Pereslavl is sometimes compared to Venice, it is because water is also an inseparable part of daily life: it feeds, it carries passengers and goods, it enchants walkers. We regularly see boats moored to willow branches. In the past, these canoe-shaped boats were made of the entire trunk of an aspen.
They have kept this form, the safest on the lake agitated by the wind. Near the houses of the town, the nets dry as before, and if two friends go out to smoke a cigarette, they will not fail to take a fishing rod to tease the fish. The cats will drink at the river and in the evening, the boats of the fishermen descend towards the lake.

Overlooking the southern Moskva River, this well-maintained park-museum can be visited in summer as well as in winter, when hundreds of children come with their sledges. You can stroll at leisure, because it is really pretty and you can have a tea in one of the many small cafes that border it. The village Kolomenskoye belonged always to the families of the Russian tsars. His name is found in the testament of Ivan Kalita (1328).
From the fourteenth century, the area was the preferred summer residence of great princes, then tsars. At the beginning of the 16th century was built a wooden palace, surrounded by gardens, but it does not exist today. You can see the model at the museum. Kolomenskoye is also linked to the popular resurrection led by Ivan Bolotnikov in the early 17th century.

Today's Kolomenskoye features:

• The Church of Ascension (Voznesseniya, 1532).
• The sytny palace (17th century).
• The church of Saint-Georges-le-Vainqueur (XVIth century).
• The Church of Our Lady of Kazan (1660).
• The Vodovzvodnaya tower (16th century).
• Stone entrance doors (1670).

Kolomenskoye should especially be visited for the Church of Ascension (Voznesseniya). It was built on the orders of Basil III, a great lover of hunting and architecture. It is supposed to have been built to celebrate the birth of the long-awaited heir, the future Ivan the Terrible. The church stands on a high hill above the Moskva. The French composer Hector Berlioz visited Moscow in the 1840s and was delighted by the beauty of the Ascension Church, which he found more beautiful than the cathedrals of Strasbourg and Milan.

The church is well deserving of its name: a superb polygonal structure sloping towards the sky and surmounted by a pyramidal roof (62 m high), it stands out against a wide panorama. 

It was the first stone church in Russia (1532) that influenced the Moscow buildings by its composition and decoration. 
If you enter inside the church, you will be surprised by the brightness and the interior space.

By 1912, the project for the construction of the metro was validated. But the revolution and the war delayed the project. In 1931, the metro becomes a priority and will quickly make the pride of the Soviets.
Four years later, the first line was opened: Sokolniki stations at Park Kultury. The metro since has continued to develop, and the years
1950 marked the end of the construction of the koltso, the circular line. It is also on this same line that we find the most beautiful resorts. Today, there are more than 170 and every year at least one new station is born. Stalin wanted to make this subway a propaganda tool and did not skimp on the means. Marble, granite, mosaics were the main materials used. It is even the marble of the Cathedral of the Holy Savior which served to enrich the walls of some stations (among them there is the station Kropotinskaya).

It is the most beautiful and richest metro in the world, but it is undoubtedly one of those that attracts the greatest number of travelers. He carries more than 7 million a day. The subway served several functions, and in addition to the congestion of marshrutki and buses in the 1930s, at the time of the war it served as a refuge for aerial alerts.
It has also been built in depth, you will quickly realize by the length of the escalators. Frank Lloyd Wright, a famous American architect, is reported to have returned from a stay in Russia: "The Moscow metro sweeps the New York sewer level."

Béloruskaia:

Mayakovskaia : 

The emblematic escalator:

Partisanskaya:

Novosloboskaya:

Komsomolskaya:

190 km from Moscow and 60 km from Yaroslavl. 64,750 inhabitants. The oldest city of the Golden Ring, Rostov was founded in the 9th century on the shores of Lake Nero. The first mention of Rostov dates back to 862. In the Middle Ages, it was the capital of the region called "beyond the forest" (Zalecie or northeastern Russia), as well as the region of Rostov and Suzdal.
The geographical position of the city, far removed from the seat of the Kiev princes, allowed the boyars to conduct numerous seditious enterprises, including regularly fighting against Vladimir and Suzdal. The boyars were aristocrats (or knights) who could, as such, enter the throne as tsars.
The pagan rites being well established in the region, the establishment of the Church in 989 had a difficult start here - the first two bishops of Rostov, Abraham and Leonti, were thus murdered. Their relics can be found in the Cathedral of the Dormition. The city nevertheless took off in the 12th and 13th centuries, forming with Suzdal the most powerful region of Russia. Serge of Radonege stayed at the Rostov Kremlin.
Thanks to Yuri Dolgoruky, Rostov gained independence from Kiev, but did not obtain, as she expected, the title of capital, the prince having settled in Suzdal. In spite of his antiquity, his wealth, and his power, Rostov never attained this supreme distinction, and conceived an eternal jealousy for successive capitals, or cities, which, for a time, carried the favors of the prince or tsar.

The city was soon considered suspect by the authorities, who thought they saw in Rostov a nest of intrigues for ambitious and unscrupulous boyars. The history of Rostov, however, was often illustrated by the bravery of its inhabitants: at the beginning of the 10th century, they left with the Slavs of Russia of Kiev to fight Constantinople who paid accordingly his contribution to Rostov. In 1238, the grand prince of Vladimir, Yuri, and the prince of Yaroslavl, Vsevolod, perished on the banks of the river, while the young prince of Rostov, Vassilko, was assassinated by the Mongol Tatars. On six occasions the inhabitants of Rostov tried to break free from the Mongolian yoke after 1262. At the beginning of the 13th century, Rostov became an important cultural place: there was a seminary with a rich collection of manuscripts of Greek origin. In the 15th and 16th centuries, there were no fewer than 20 churches and 10 monasteries, of which only the Cathedral of Dormition remains today. The struggles between the princes and the resulting fragmentation led the country to a serious crisis: Rostov was divided into two parts, each governed by her own prince. It was an occasion for the inhabitants to mock power: "on the lands of Rostov, there is a prince in every village," or "the seven princes of Rostov have only one warrior for them all. "

It was Ivan Kalita, who told Ivan l'Escarcelle, that Rostov would enter Muscovy (1474), gradually buying the lands of the city until he could claim ownership. A legend tells that Ivan the Terrible, on his way to Kazan where he was going to fight, stopped at Rostov and seized the staff of the monk Abraham, founder of the monastery of the same name. This stick brought him luck, since he won the victory and, in gratitude, built in this monastery the church of Epiphany, whose complex composition is the prototype of St. Basil's Cathedral in Moscow (the architect in was probably Andrei Mali, builder of the Church of Ascension). Towards the end of the 16th century, when the Poles reached the gates of the city, the Metropolitan of Moscow was called Theodore Romanov, whom Boris Godunov forced to wear the habit and who was none other than the father of the future Tsar Michael Romanov . The history of the Rostov Kremlin is closely linked to that of Metropolitan Ionas who, in the 17th century, became such an important figure in the city that his fame reached the capital Moscow.

Ionas became Metropolitan of Rostov in 1651 and remained there until 1691, that is for forty years. He could probably have had a brighter career without an unfortunate misstep. In fact, the inclinations of power of Patriarch Nikon led Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich to remove him from office in 1658. For two years, Ionas held the position of Patriarch in Moscow, but without having the title. At an office he headed, Ionas had the unfortunate idea of ​​asking Nikon, then a simple believer, for the blessing. This unacceptable act is enough to send him back to Rostov. Rancorier, he strove to build richer and more extravagant buildings than those in the capital. In addition to the sumptuous Kremlin of Rostov, whose construction began in 1670 and whose design is more like a princely residence than a monastery, he built in Uglich, Borissoglebski Monastery and his hometown of Anguelovo where he built a wooden church with as many windows as there are days in the year. In the eighteenth century, the Metropolitan went to Yaroslav, leaving the Kremlin of Rostov to merchants who found in its architecture many advantages: churches in floors, galleries and ground floor, so many places easy to transform in warehouses or stores.

At 203 km from Moscow, about 10,000 inhabitants in 2017. Suzdalia is nicknamed the country of the fields. Its forest, deforested at one time, has never been replanted, except for the few trees that line the road. The fields extend as far as the eye can see, in a rectangle about 70 km by 40 km. The land, fertile and abundantly cultivated, is close in its composition of Ukrainian (black earth or humus rich) chernoziom. The villages around Suzdal have a resolutely rural character: no apparent industry, but the real countryside with its small wooden houses, the well in the courtyard, the farmyard, the goats ... At the entrance of the city, on a small hill overlooking the river Kamenka, stands the church of Saint-Côme and Saint-Damien, on a former pagan site where animals were sacrificed in honor of the Sun God. The river, perky, plays between the reeds and bouquets of shrubs, the church is white and serene: an ideal place to picnic.

If the city is today so rich in monuments, it is because, from all time, it was the object of various gifts, coming from the princes and tsars and allowing the construction of a church, a convent or a monastery. The situation of Suzdal, a strategic place on the Vladimir-Yaroslavl road, was also in the interest of the nobles and tsars.

Suzdal has 33 churches, 5 monasteries, 17 bell towers and no modern construction in its city center. It has kept its old topography: the Kremlin in the center, a shopping district next door with the market place, the old Red Square (the word "red" also means "beautiful" in Old Russian, and all the cities of the Ancient Russia had their beautiful Red Square) and the monasteries at the ends of the city. Apart from its immense religious heritage, Suzdal is also a small town very pleasant to walk on a sunny day. The fields are nearby, the atmosphere is rural, the small market friendly. The recent constructions (of the cemented agglomeration imitating the brick and painted in white, but whose functional interior design appeals more to the Suzdalians who prefer them to the rudimentary isbas) were pushed back outside the village to preserve it its aspect of museum, which forces the inhabitants of this city of buildings of two floors at most to make a long way to reach the center. The walk, for the pedestrian who completes it a first time, as a walker, is not unpleasant (starting from the center and the pedestrian walkway flowered and raised on the left, before Lenin, when we come from Kostroma he cuts through fields and woods). These rural crossings are also common in the city itself, and the visitor can spend his day walking from one monastery to another.

A Borsch

Russian authorities have acknowledged the use of chemical weapons in Syria by the Assad regime

According to Damascus and Moscow, all incidents involving the use of chemical weapons in Syria are either pure fiction or the work of anti-government forces. However, in this silent defense of information and propaganda, there are serious shortcomings. One of them is the book "The Syrian Frontier", whose preface and afterword were written by members of the Russian government. In the book they recommended to read, it was stated that weapons of mass destruction in Syria are used by "both parties".

And then Russia took a critical view of the actions of the Syrian authorities. "As for Syria, we are not lawyers for Bashar Assad's regime," Russian Ambassador to the UN Vitaly Churkin said on 4 October. - We unequivocally consider the continuation of violence unacceptable. We condemn the repression of demonstrations by peaceful protesters. "We are constantly urging the Syrian authorities to immediately stop the violence against peaceful protesters," Sergei Lavrov told his subordinate in December of the same year.In the meantime, the demands of the protesters were qualified by the minister as "absolutely fair ":" The reforms are late and even canceled ... The people want democratic changes ".

168 km from Moscow, Nearly 350,000 inhabitants (2014). In the twelfth century, the city of Vladimir played a very important role in the formation of the Russian state. It was founded at the beginning of the twelfth century by Vladimir - the one who owns the whole world - also said Vladimir Monomakh, who ruled from 1113 to 1125. Coming from Kiev, his capital, he visited his state to its borders when he discovered , while going down by boat Kliasma river, this site which seduced it by its green frame. Its pine, birch and fir forests, its numerous rivers and lakes, as well as its strategic location, decided to build a fortress. Vladimir was the last of the Kiev princes. After him, his territory was divided into forty principalities which his sons disputed with other princes, provoking troubles and fatal divisions which will facilitate, less than a century later, the foreign invasions of Germany, Sweden or Mongolia. But when he founded the city of Vladimir, his plan is consid-
  saddle. In the midst of a rapprochement between the Russian and Constantinople churches, the prince wants to make Vladimir a "new Constantinople". His son, Yuri Dolgoruky, and his grandson Andrei Bogolioubski ("beloved of God"), will continue the paternal work: great projects will be undertaken, the best architects of the country and beyond the borders will be incurred. Andrey, who had traveled extensively in Europe, wanted noble materials for his churches for which he chose this white stone, similar to the tufeau of the castles of the Loire. The former Russia being apparently devoid of quarries - everything was built of wood until the end of the twelfth century - it was necessary to bring stones up the Volga from its mouth in the Caspian Sea. A considerable effort that some historians temperate by observing that two careers close to Moscow had probably already been discovered at that time. The people of Vladimir do not necessarily remember the glorious past of this ancient capital of Russia, a past recalled yet by its imposing religious buildings. Become a large industrial center in the middle of the century, marked by a Cartesian reconstruction architecture, this regional capital of almost 400 000 inhabitants has nevertheless retained some habits and some rural accents, sensitive especially when we leave the main street for its tranquil isbas to the gardens more utilitarian than aesthetic.

Even though they are currently idling, the city's industries have allowed it to develop and continue to live: agricultural machinery, electricity, plastics, automotive equipment (windshield wiper factories). Most of Vladimir's factories are located at the exit of the city towards Suzdal, including the thermal power station, located opposite the chemical factory and the car accessories factory (pressure gauges, wipers, etc.) which diffuses its products to the large automobile production units of Tolyatti and Nizhny Novgorod.It may be surprising to see the Church of St. Dimitri as the Cathedral of the Dormition as well preserved despite the outrages of the revolutionary era that have so many places of worship: Vladimir's believers claim that the entire region, and the city in particular, is placed under the irrefragable protection of the Blessed Virgin, which has left them untouched. A simpler and less glorious explanation is that Vladimir, like Suzdal, having lost their splendor over the centuries, they no longer represented, at the time of the revolution, sufficiently powerful symbols of the old regime.

The culture of Russia, a transcontinental country of Eastern Europe and Asia, first refers to the observable cultural practices of its inhabitants (147 000 000, estimate 2017). Russian culture refers to all the artistic productions (in the broad sense) that originated in Russia or were born of Russian-speaking authors. Due to the vastness of its territory, its late cultural development and the authoritarianism of its political regimes, Russia has given birth to original cultural works, some of which have marked well beyond its borders: novels of Fyodor Dostoevsky or those of Leo Tolstoy, the theater of Anton Chekhov, the poems of Alexander Pushkin or Sergey Yesenin, the music of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Igor Stravinsky, the painting of Vassily Kandinsky or Marc Chagall ...

The two world wars and the Soviet experience profoundly changed Russian cultural life in the twentieth century. In addition to the exile of a part of its intelligentsia, the Russian Revolution caused a "freeze" then a "thaw" cultural that affected society as a whole. Conducted under the aegis of the Communist Party, inspired by "socialist realism," however, Soviet culture was marked by works such as Mikhail Sholokhov's The Peaceful Don, or that of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, that of the composer Dmitry Shostakovich, or certain achievements of the cinema. Soviet, as Sergei Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin ...

The collapse of the Soviet regime in 1991 provoked a new cultural and social shock and placed the Russian world before its traditional questions: to follow the Western path or to attempt a specific development.

In addition, an extremely demanding training system has enabled the emergence of many internationally renowned artistic talents, starting with the ballet companies of the Bolshoi Theater or Mariinsky.

Matryoshka – The Russian Nesting Doll

It's hard to find a symbol of Russia more popular than the traditional Russian nesting doll. These decorated wooden dolls "with a secret" are also called matryoshka dolls or babushka dolls. They are recognized even in the countries thousand miles away from Russia. Taking a Russian nesting doll back home is a must among tourists from Europe and the United States alike. The lovers of exotics collect matryoshkas in Australia and South Africa. The simplicity and originality of matryoshka dolls attract the fans of Russian folk art from around the world. Bright and picturesque Russian nesting dolls decorate the fireplaces and bookshelves in the homes of thousands of Russians.

Russian Hospitality

There is a big difference between the Russian tradition of hospitality and a friendly attitude towards guests in other countries of the world. The legends about the breadth of the Russian soul have a very good reason to exist. Russians love to accept guests and make great hosts. When in Russia, you don't need to wait for a special occasion like a birthday or a holiday to visit a friend or a neighbor. Russians like visiting each other, meeting in friendly companies for dinner, or just stopping by to catch up on what's going on. The latter is called "to drop in for a cup of coffee" (забежать на чашечку кофе).

Russian Banya

 Interior of a typical Russian banya

Banya (a Russian type of sauna, a kind of steam bath) is one of the oldest Russian traditions. Despite the fact that this tradition is several centuries old, the banya is popular even today. You can find banyas in large cities and small towns. Usually those Russians who have summer cottages, almost always build their own banya there.

Russian Samovars

Samovars and tea-drinking are an indispensable element of Russian culture. In modern Russia, samovars are rarely used to boil water for tea as originally intended, however many families place samovars in the center of the table during holiday celebrations. Reserving pride of place for a samovar at the festive table is both a tribute that Russians give to their ancestors and a ceremony that embodies warm-hearted hospitality.