Rostov Kremlin

Rostov's kremlin was built in the 1670s and 80s by Metropolitan Iona Sysoevich as a residence, not a fortress - the white walls and eleven towers are decorative, with windows and thin masonry that would not have held an attack, and the whole thing is arranged as an ideal ecclesiastical court around a pond, with gate churches, galleries running along the walls and the metropolitan's chambers. The belfry beside the Assumption cathedral holds fifteen bells, the largest weighing thirty-two tonnes, and the peals composed for them in the seventeenth century were notated and preserved, so what is rung today is documented seventeenth-century music - the Ionic, the Akimov, the Georgian - performed on the hour in season. The building appears throughout the 1973 film Ivan Vasilievich Changes Profession, which is why Russian visitors recognise the galleries instantly. A dome collapsed in a 1953 tornado and restoration followed.

What you actually see

• The decorative walls - eleven towers built as a bishop's court, never for defence.
• The bell peals - seventeenth-century compositions, notated and still rung.
• The galleries - covered walkways along the walls linking the churches.
• The lake - Nero directly below the walls, shallow and reed-fringed.

When to go

May to September, when the bell peals are rung and the galleries are open. Three to four hours. Three hours by train from Moscow.

Honest expectations

Bell ringing happens at set times and needs checking on arrival. The complex ticket does not cover everything; individual museums are extra. Lake Nero is shallow and muddy rather than scenic up close. Busy with tour groups in summer.

Nearby

The Spaso-Yakovlevsky monastery is along the lake; Pereslavl-Zalessky is south.