Things to do in Vologda Region
-
History, Architecture & Art Museum
Today the kremlin houses the main exhibits of the city's History, Architecture & Art Museum. Forty-minute kremlin tours in English are available from the excursions department (722 511) in the Gavriilovsky Korpus. The museum's history and natural history section, in the same building, ranges from stuffed wildlife to stuff on Stalin's periods of exile in Vologda.
Those with a morbid streak will appreciate the female skeleton from the 2nd century BC and the astounding, Hieronymus Bosch-like anonymous painting from 1721, Strashny Sud (Frightful Trial).
The museum's art section on the east side of the main courtyard includes some astonishing examples of Vologda lace and embro…
reviewed
-
A
Museum of Diplomatic Corps
This unusual two-room museum chronicles a little-known blip in WWI history. In February 1918, with the Germans approaching Petrograd, Allied ambassadors were ordered to evacuate. US ambassador David Francis suggested simply relocating. Studying a map, he chose Vologda. Other embassies followed his lead, the French, Italian and Serbian ministries sharing a luxury rail carriage parked in Vologda station. That proved handy since in July all the embassies decamped again to Arkhangelsk. The eclectic and impressively researched exhibit has some notes in English and is housed in the former US embassy, a tired if once-grand timber house with a four-pillar wooden portico.
reviewed
-
Spaso-Prilutsky Monastery
This working Spaso-Prilutsky monastery, dating from the 14th century, rises beside the Vologda River on the northern outskirts of the city. It's a beautiful place even though visitors are restricted to limited areas inside. Standard modest dress and covered heads for women are required.
The upper church of the five-domed Transfiguration Cathedral (Spaso-Preobrazhensky sobor), built in the 16th century, is still in the early stages of restoration, but the lower church is full of icons and holds services. Behind is the beautiful, wooden Dormition Church (Uspenskaya tserkov), built in 1519 with a single spire and an equal-armed cross plan.
reviewed
-
B
Kraevedchesky Museum
The extensive Kraevedchesky Museum is in the 17th century Gavriilovsky Korpus. Beyond all the stuffed mammals (go on, make that bear growl) is a rich prehistory section including a 3500-year-old lady skeleton clasping at her modesty. Look for the Hieronymus Bosch–like 1721 painting Strashny Sud, in which demons, angels and endless salmon-pink humanoids fight out the final tribulations of eternity.
reviewed
-
Museum
One of several fine old wooden buildings at the northern end of Leningradskaya houses this lovable little museum evoking the life of a 19th century, 17-child middle-class family. Amid portraits and old dolls are musical boxes and an old gramophone that still plays. A selection of beautiful photos showcase other examples of Vologda’s historic wooden architecture.
reviewed
-
Pogrebok
Pogrebok offers meat dishes, pizzas, kebabs and even curry (sometimes) washed down with excellent home-brewed ales in an attractive vaulted basement wallpapered with old newspapers and furnished with heavy wooden benches. There’s a brilliant billiard room too. It’s directly behind 121 Sovetsky, but access is from a side alley.
reviewed
-
St Procopio’s Cathedral
St Procopio’s Cathedral has a stone purported to grant your wish if you sit on it. Clear your mind, and look at the church complex across the wide, unbridged river. At sunset peaceable gaggles of artists, fishermen, lovers and wobbly old pensioners dot the wide sweep of grassy river-front serenaded by cooing pigeons.
reviewed
-
TNT nightclub
You can down a few beers at the rustically wood-furnished Pivnoy Bar Bochka and then move on, still within the same building, to the TNT nightclub which provides different ambiences for different nights. Friday and Saturday (when there's an admission charge) feature a floor show with erotic dancing; Sunday is students' night with karaoke.
reviewed
-
C
Puzatiy Patsyuk
This well-executed rustic-effect nostalgia restaurant serves top-notch food including duck in a wonderfully tart apple-and-cowberry sauce ( kachka s yablykami ). The menu (in Ukrainian with Russian translations) is amusingly presented like a tsarist-era police report. At weekend evenings there’s a R50 cover charge.
reviewed
-
D
Kremlin
Vologda's kremlin is the city's historical centrepiece, a 17th-century fortified enclosure of churches, archbishop's chambers and other handsome buildings. It was built as a church administrative centre to accompany St Sofia's Cathedral next door, whose domes and bell tower greatly enhance the beauty of the kremlin's courtyards.
reviewed
Advertisement
-
E
St Sofia’s Cathedral
Powerful five-domed St Sofia’s Cathedral has a soaring interior fully covered with beautiful 1680s frescoes which, to some untutored eyes, look more attractive than the more famous Unesco-listed ones at Ferapontovo. The astonishingly tall iconostasis is filled with darkly brooding saintly portraiture.
reviewed
-
‘Residence’
A good central starting point for exploring the town’s historic centre is Ded Moroz’s part-time ‘residence’ where the Russian Santa shows up at festival times. There’s a ‘throne room’ and a lacklustre exhibition room.
reviewed
-
F
Museum of Forgotten Things
Housed in a restored home with period furniture, this interactive museum aims to impart an understanding of Russian life in the 19th century. Guests are encouraged to attempt to set the dining-room table with imperial china, play period music on a gramophone and learn the complicated norms of receiving guests.
reviewed
-
G
Church of St John the Baptist
Before the revolution, on pl Revolyutsii there were three churches and one grand cathedral. Only the Church of St John the Baptist (1710-17) survived. The church makes an ironic backdrop for the very first Lenin statue ever erected in the USSR, back in 1924, and possibly the only one that's life-size.
reviewed
-
Hausbrandt Cafe
Central Vologda’s most appealing café-restaurant is constantly bustling with shopping families and relaxed young professionals. Plate-lickingly good Florentine tagliatelle in bacon-and-cream sauce is nicely complemented by the mildly peppery Chilean house wine (R130 per glass).
reviewed
-
Peter the Great House-Museum
First opened in 1885, Vologda’s oldest museum is a tiny late-17th-century stone house that supposedly hosted Tsar Peter I during his visits to Vologda. Exhibits include Peter’s death mask and red tunic, underlining his remarkable height.
reviewed
-
Marina Barandina
Marina Barandina speaks English extremely well and is an expert on Vologda's history and places of interest. At weekends (only) she conducts excellent general city tours, tours to Spaso-Prilutsky Monastery and day trips to Kirillov and Ferapontovo.
reviewed
-
H
Vologodskie Suveniry
Vologodskie Suveniry sells classic kruzhevo (Vologda lace), colourful lacquerware, painted wooden trays and delicately carved birchwood items. There’s a second branch on ul Mira at ul Chekova.
reviewed
-
I
Resurrection Cathedral
Just outside the Kremlin enclosure, the amply domed 1776 Resurrection Cathedral adds photogenic foreground to Kremlin views. It also houses an art gallery of regularly changing exhibits.
reviewed
-
Open-Air Museum
This open-air museum featuring historical wooden architecture is 12km up the Vytegra road (bus 107). It was under partial reconstruction at the time of research. Call ahead to check if it has reopened.
reviewed
Advertisement
-
Kafe Kuba
Great Latin-themed cocktail-bar–café offering a wide choice of cigars, water pipes and tequilas on three floors: upstairs is more interesting. Decent coffee from a mock-’50s espresso-brewer.
reviewed
-
Berendey
Amid all the tacky Deda Moroz dolls, Berendey beside the Deda Moroza Residence proffers plenty of attractive and affordable Niello metalwork and some decent birch-craft.
reviewed
-
J
Kafe Lesnaya Skazka
Filling if hardly gourmet, the soup–salad–fishcake set ‘biznes lunches’ cost only R90 in this modest but friendly little café part of which occupies a 1911 former chapel.
reviewed
-
K
Pivnoy Bar Bochka
You can down a few beers at the rustically wood-furnished Pivnoy Bar Bochka and then move on, still within the same building, to the TNT nightclub which provides different ambiences for different nights.
reviewed
-
L
Restaurant Mercury
Can be a blast with the right company. Effusive women will guide you to heavily laid-out tables and lavish you with attention while a band plays gypsy tunes (Vologda has a sizable Roma population).
reviewed
