Curated playlist
Rus' towns
- LvivLviv is Ukraine's fifth-largest city, but its history stretches far longer and stranger than that ranking suggests. Founded in 1250 by King Daniel of Galicia and named in honour of his son Lev, the city has passed through the hands of…
- Nizhny NovgorodNizhny Novgorod sits at the precise point where two of Russia's greatest rivers, the Volga and the Oka, merge into one. On the 4th of February 1221, Prince George II of Vladimir planted a wooden hillfort at that confluence, and what began…
- YaroslavlYaroslavl sits at the point where the Volga and Kotorosl rivers meet, 250 kilometers northeast of Moscow, and for a few extraordinary months in 1612, it was the capital of Russia. Not Moscow, not Saint Petersburg -- a trading city on the…
- MuromOn the west bank of the Oka River, the city of Murom has stood since at least 862. That entry in the Primary Chronicle places it among the oldest cities in Russia, and today 107,497 people live within its boundaries. It sits 137 km from…
- KurskKursk sits where three rivers meet: the Kur, the Tuskar, and the Seym. It is one of the oldest cities in Russia, recorded in written history as far back as 1032. Long before the city became a symbol of one of World War II's defining…
- PolotskPolotsk sits on the Dvina River in what is now Belarus, and it has been there, in one form or another, since before the year 862. That is the date when the Primary Chronicle first recorded its name, listing it alongside Murom and Belozersk…
- BarysawIn Barysaw, a cannon from the Napoleonic era sits in the town museum. It marks 1812, when Napoleon's retreating army made the Berezina River famous across Europe. This city in central Belarus, 74 km northeast of Minsk, has been under…
- SuzdalSuzdal is a small town in Russia's Vladimir Oblast, and in 1943 it held some of the highest-ranking prisoners of the Second World War. High-ranking Nazi officers captured at the Battle of Stalingrad were locked inside a monastery there,…
- MoscowMoscow holds the second-highest number of billionaires of any city in the world, tied with Hong Kong. It stands on the Moskva River in Central Russia, the northernmost and coldest megacity on Earth. More than 13 million people live within…
- SmolenskSmolensk sits on the Dnieper River, 360 kilometers west-southwest of Moscow, and for more than a thousand years it has stood at the hinge between civilizations. Its first recorded mention dates to 863 AD, two years before the founding of…
- Vladimir, RussiaVladimir, Russia, still has buildings standing from the 12th century, stonework old enough to have watched Kiev's power fade and Moscow's rise begin. This city on the Klyazma River sits 200 kilometers east of Moscow. It once ruled its own…
- KyivKyiv has stood on the banks of the Dnieper River for at least fifteen centuries, and during that time it has been sacked, burned, rebuilt, conquered, and reclaimed more times than almost any other city on earth. Between the end of 1918 and…