Two UNESCO-protected ancient cathedrals in the vicinity of Veliky Novgorod will be for the first time open to tourists, as the Novgorod State Museum-Reserve reported to “Interfax”.

      “Our unique Church of the Assumption on Volotovo field (XIV century) and the Church of Annunciation on Myachino (XII century) will open to public” – the agency’s interlocutor said. He explained that the Church of the Assumption was given to the museum by the government of Novgorod Oblast, the Church of Annunciation was finally restored in 2015. The masters working under the guidance of the Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences Vladimir Sedov (Moscow) brought the church into the exhibition state, in particular, arranged the floors there.

      

      Novgorod is the cradle of the Russian state, home of the Russian democratic and republican traditions, and a spiritual and military stronghold of Orthodox Russia. Medieval Novgorod was one of the largest European centers of enlightenment and culture. Nowadays it is a modern town with a well-developed economy, social services and infrastructure.

      Since ancient times the lands around Lake Ilmen lay along international trade routes leading from the Baltic Sea to the Volga River. Novgorod was first mentioned in chronicles in the middle of the 9th century. In 862 the Scandinavian prince Rurik was invited with his armed forces to Rus to carry out all legal and law-enforcement functions. He was the founder of a dynasty whose members would rule the Russian lands for over seven and a half centuries. In the beginning of the 10th century, the successful military campaigns of Prince Igor and his voevoda (military commander) Oleg to the South of Novgorod helped to establish the famous trade route known as the route "from the Varangians to the Greeks". This sped up the unification of the Eastern Slavic tribes into a unified state known as Kievan Rus.

      The establishment of the constantly operating route "from the Varangians to the Greeks" encouraged development of Novgorod as an important crossroads for transit trade. Novgorodian furs, honey, wax, flax and hemp were well-known in Europe, including England.

      Novgorod reached the peak of its prosperity in the 13th-15th centuries. According to standards of those days it was a large city with a population of between twenty-five and thirty thousand people, comparable to Lubeck, Vienna and Prague.

      Numerous birch-bark letters found in Novgorod represent a convincing proof of the mass literacy of the local population. It was Yaroslav the Wise who laid the foundation for teaching of reading and writing, having established a school at the archbishop's court. The St. Sophia Cathedral as well as the largest monasteries such as the Yuriev Monastery, St. Anthony Monastery and the Khutyn Monastery became centers for chronicle writing and book collecting. One of the largest libraries of medieval Rus, totaling over 1,500 books, had been carefully collected and preserved in the St. Sophia Cathedral in Novgorod.