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We stopped in Goritsy just long enough to board a bus for the Kirillov Monastery a short distance away on the road to Vologda.
These massive walls were erected in the 14th century to defend the approaches of Vologda from the Lithuanians and the Swedes.
The large Assumption Cathedral shows once more how fortifications and Cathedrals go hand in hand in Russia. Further south, the Orthodox faith played an important role in resisting and eventually overcoming the pagan and later Islamised Mongol hordes. Here in the north, it played the same role in mobilising the people against the Catholic Poles and Lithuanians and the Protestant Swedes.
Below, more views that demonstrate the military function of the Kirillov Fortress-Monastery.
Legend has it that this charming wooden chapel marks the spot of the initial settlement inside the huge compound.
An odd sight in the northern taiga is this ancient church flooded by the Volga-Baltic Canal connecting the small White Lake north of Goritsy and the large Onega Lake that drains into the Baltic sea.
After this lock the Chicherin will cross Onega lake to reach tiny Kizhi Island at the northern end.
When the Russians arrived in the 12th century they found that the southern end of Kizhi island was being used as a sacred site for pagan rituals by the Ugric speaking Karelians so they quickly built churches to exorcise the place.
None of the early wooden churches remain but others have been built, the most remarkable being the complex formed of the 1714 Cathedral of the Transfiguration with its 22 domes and intricate gables on the right and the 1764 Church of the Protection of the Virgin on the left.
Below, two more views of the complex showing its Bell Tower.
Kizhi has become a Museum of Ancient Wooden Architecture displaying churches and houses transported here from all over the region like this 1880 house from the village of Kleshcheila that is said to have belonged to a Yakovlev family.
This 14th century Church of Lazarus' Resurrection, from the Monastery of Murom, is said to be one of the oldest wooden monuments still preserved in Russia.
As far as I recall this is the Church of the Archangel Michael but I'm not sure for I don't have a post card to identify it with certainty like the others.
After a pleasant stroll in Kizhi the Chicherin brought us to Petrosavodsk where we enjoyed a show of Karelian folk dances and songs before the long cruise down Lake Onega, through the Svir River and across Lake Lagoda to Valaam Island in the north.
The Valaam Transfiguration Monastery was built in the 14th century as a fortress against the Swedes who destroyed it completely anyway in 1611. Peter the Great rebuilt it. It fell to the Finns in 1911 and the Soviets closed it down when they regained Karelia in 1940 but it is now being restored. The Finnish border is only 70 km away, half over water, half over land.
Here is a nice looking church on a nearby island. Now, we cross Lake Lagoda again and cruise down the Neva to our destination St Petersburg.
Moscow might be interesting but St Petersburg is beautiful. The enormous St Isaac, that took 40 years to build (1818-1858), had been turned into a museum when I visited it in 1965 to watch a huge Foucault pendulum hanging from the top of the dome show a rate of rotation of 13º per hour due to the 60º latitude of the city (Foucault's original demonstration of the earth's spin Paris had produced a rotation of only 11º in Paris because of the lower latitude of that city, at the north pole it would be 15°, 15X24=360.).
Helsinki, Stockholm, Oslo, Alaska's Anchorage and Canada' Churchill are also on the 60th parallel or close to it, daylight is short in winter but extremely long in summer, hence the renowned "White Nights of St Petersburg".
The army of European architects imported by Peter the Great gave the city a definitely European look with some exceptions such as the very Russian Church of the Resurrection of Christ built at the turn of the century and Rastelli's 18th century baroque-russian Smolny Cathedral shown below.
The cruise included a tour of the Hermitage, of St Isaac and of the town of Pushkin (previously called Tsarskoe Selo), 25 km south of St Petersburg where the great baroque Catherine Palace was built between 1744 and 1796 according to Rastelli's designs.
Below left, entrance to the Palace Chapel and right, statue of Russia's favourite poet Pushkin who studied here in 1937.
It had been a great cruise, I had learnt a lot about Russian history and the role of "absolute truths" in the Russian psyche. After a couple of days, Sacha, Tamara and I took the night train back to Moscow and I flew back to Montreal shortly after.
