Novgorod Detinets

Novgorod escaped the Mongol invasion and governed itself for three centuries as a republic - a veche assembly of citizens that elected its officials and, unusually, hired and dismissed its princes on contract, until Moscow ended the arrangement in 1478 and carried off the veche bell. The detinets, the walled citadel on the left bank, is the centre of that: red brick walls of the 1480s on older foundations, nine surviving towers, and inside them St Sophia of 1050, the millennium monument of 1862, and the museum, which holds among other things a large collection of birch bark documents. Those are the find that changed the picture of medieval Russia: over a thousand letters scratched on birch bark, excavated from waterlogged Novgorod soil since 1951 - shopping lists, debts, love notes, a boy's drawings and schoolwork - showing widespread literacy among ordinary townspeople, women included.

History

The site was a pagan burial ground when the first bishop of Novgorod, Ioakim Korsunianin, built an earlier Cathedral of Holy Wisdom there around 989, and it remained largely a church precinct, though Novgorod's boyars built houses in its southern part. Fortifications are first mentioned in 1044 and again in 1116, probably earth banks topped by a wooden palisade; stone towers and walls followed in 1302, Archbishop Vasily Kalika rebuilt the eastern wall in stone in 1331-1335, the rest was in stone by 1400, and Archbishop Evfimy II added the Chamber of Facets, one of the easternmost examples of Brick Gothic, in 1433 and a clock tower in 1436, and rebuilt the stretch of wall that fell into the Volkhov in 1437. After Ivan III took the city in 1478, Muscovite builders rebuilt the fortress in 1484-1490, a third of it paid for by Archbishop Gennady: an oval 545 metres long and 240 wide, with walls 1,487 metres round and nine surviving towers (Wikipedia, Novgorod Detinets).

Highlights

• The birch bark letters - over a thousand everyday documents showing broad literacy.
• The republic - a citadel of a state governed by assembly until 1478.
• The 1480s walls - red brick with nine surviving towers above the Volkhov.
• The millennium monument - the 1862 bronze marking a thousand years of Russian statehood.

When to go

May to September. Half a day for the detinets, a full day with Yuriev monastery and the wooden architecture museum.

Things to know

The wall walk and individual museums are ticketed separately. Novgorod's other major churches are scattered across the city and the far bank. Winters are long and much closes. The city is quieter and plainer than its history suggests.

Nearby

St Sophia is inside the walls; Yuriev monastery and Vitoslavlitsy are south along the river.

Key facts