Lake Svetloyar

Svetloyar is small - about half a kilometre across - remarkably round, unusually deep for its size at around thirty metres, and fed by springs, which keeps the water clear and cold. Its shape and depth are why the legend attached: the story, written down in the Old Believer tradition from the seventeenth century, says the city of Kitezh stood here and that when a besieging army approached in the thirteenth century the city sank into the lake rather than be taken, and that the pure of heart can still hear its bells and see its domes under the water. It became a pilgrimage site for Old Believers and remains one, with people walking barefoot around the lake three times, leaving ribbons and taking water. Rimsky-Korsakov made an opera of it. Geologists have surveyed the basin and found no city, which has changed nothing. There is a small museum in the village.

History

Vasily Dokuchaev, the first to study the lake in the late 19th century, took it for a meteorite crater, and the writer Vladimir Korolenko suggested a volcanic origin in the early 20th century. Divers led by Mark M. Barinov mapped the bottom by sonar in 1969, finding two underwater terraces round a central pit, field studies in 2009 supported the meteorite theory and dated the lake to around 3,000 years ago, and in 2015 it was registered as an object of cultural heritage (Wikipedia, Lake Svetloyar).

Highlights

• The round lake - half a kilometre across, thirty metres deep, spring-fed and clear.
• The Kitezh legend - a city said to have sunk rather than be captured.
• The pilgrimage - people circling the lake barefoot and leaving ribbons.
• The survey - no city on the bottom, which has made no difference to the practice.

When to go

May to September. Two to four hours. The Kazan icon feast in early July brings the largest pilgrimage gathering.

Good to know

There is nothing under the water, and the site is a place of active religious practice rather than a curiosity - behave accordingly. The lake is small and a visit is short. Mosquitoes in summer. A long drive from Nizhny Novgorod with limited public transport.

Nearby

Vladimirskoye village has the museum; Nizhny Novgorod is west.

Key facts