Totma Baroque Churches

Totma is a small town on the Sukhona whose merchants, in the eighteenth century, financed voyages to the Pacific and North America - around twenty expeditions went from here, more than from any other Russian town, and Ivan Kuskov of Totma founded Fort Ross in California in 1812 and ran it for a decade. The money came back as churches, and they are unlike anything around them: tall, narrow, vertical, with an unusually high proportion of height to base, and covered in cartouches - raised decorative panels in the brickwork, framed like shields, of a kind found nowhere else in Russia. Local tradition reads them as stylised sails and the churches as ships, which fits the town's self-image and may or may not have been intended. The Entry into Jerusalem and the Input church are the best examples. Kuskov's house is a museum with material on Fort Ross, and the town has a small maritime museum.

What to look for

• The cartouches - raised decorative brick panels found on no other Russian churches.
• The proportions - tall narrow churches with an unusual height-to-base ratio.
• The Pacific connection - a town that sent around twenty expeditions to America.
• The Kuskov house - the museum of the man who founded Fort Ross in California.

When to go

May to September. Half a day. Four hours by bus from Vologda; there is no train.

Practical notes

Four hours each way from Vologda on a bus, which makes it a committed detour. Several churches are closed or in poor repair. The ship-and-sail reading of the cartouches is tradition, not documented intent. Facilities in town are basic.

Nearby

Veliky Ustyug is north-east along the Sukhona; Vologda is south-west.