Vladimir

Vladimir (Влади́мир) is a city in Russia, administrative center of Vladimir Oblast. It is located on the river Klyazma 200 km to the east of Moscow. Geographical location is 56°09′ N 40°25′ E, and population is 358,000 inhabitants (2004). Vladimir is the medieval capital of Russia and the World Heritage Site.

Golden Age

Vladimir was founded and named after Vladimir II Monomakh in 1108. Later it became the center of Vladimir-Suzdal principality, when Monomakh's son Yuri Dolgorukii moved the seat of Great Princes of Russia from Kiev to Vladimir, thus actually transferring the capital of the country and beginning the city's Golden Age, which lasted until Mongol invasion of Russia.

At that time, Vladimir was one of Europe's largest and most beautiful cities, enjoying immense growth and prosperity. Yuri's sons, Andrew the Pious and Vsevolod The Big Nest, confirmed and enforced Vladimir's status as the capital by moving the seat of the Russian metropolitan from Kiev to Vladimir.

Scores of Russian, German, and Georgian masons worked on Vladimir's white stone cathedrals, towers and palaces. Unlike any other northern buildings, their exterior was elaborately carved with the high relief stone sculptures. Only three of these edifices stand today: the Assumption Cathedral, the Cathedral of St. Demetrius, and the Golden Gate. During Andrew's reign, a royal palace in Bogolyubovo was built, as well as the world-famous Intercession Church on the Nerl, now considered the jewel of ancient Russian architecture.

Decline

On February 8, 1238, Vladimir was besieged and taken by the Mongol hordes under Batu Khan. A great fire destroyed 32 limestone buildings on the first day only, while the grand prince and all his family perished in a church where they sought refuge from the fire.

After the Mongols, Vladimir never fully recovered, and even though it remained capital through the middle of 14th century and continued as the seat of the metropolitans of Russia, it gradually lost its political significance to the new principalities of Moscow, Tver, and Nizhny Novgorod.

Nevertheless, the highest title of Russian monarchs remained "the Grand Prince of Vladimir". The monarchs were originally crowned in Vladimir's Assumption Cathedral, but when Moscow officially superceded Vladimir as the Russian capital, a similar cathedral was loosely copied by Italian architects after Vladimir's original and built in the Moscow Kremlin. On the other hand, Muscovite monarchs built several new churches in Vladimir, notably a charming cathedral of the Knyaginin nunnery (ca. 1505).

Remains of the holy prince Alexander Nevsky were kept in the ancient Nativity abbey of Vladimir until 1703, when Peter the Great had them transferred to St Petersburg. The Nativity church itself (1191-96) tumbled down several years later, when they tried to make more windows in its walls, in order to make the interior more luminous.

White monuments

Modern Vladimir is a part of the Golden ring of the ancient Russian cities and a significant tourist center. Its three chief monuments, inscribed by UNESCO in the World Heritage List, are the following:

• 1. The magnificent 5-domed Assumption Cathedral was designed as a sepulchre of grand princes and dedicated to the holy icon Our Lady of Vladimir, which had been brought to the city by Andrew the Pious. The cathedral was constructed in 1158-60, expanded 1185-89, and painted by the great Andrei Rublev and Feodor Chernyi in 1408. In 1810, they added a lofty bell-tower in Neoclassical style.
• 2. The warrior-like cathedral of St. Demetrius was built in 1194-97 as a private chapel of Vsevolod the Big Nest in the courtyard of his palace and was consecrated to his holy patron, St. Demetrius. For all its formal unity, the cathedral represents a truly international project of Russian and Byzantine masters, Friedrich Barbarossa's masons, and carvers sent by Queen Tamar of Georgia.
• 3. The Golden Gate, originally a tower over the city's main gate, was built in 1158-64. The gate acquired its present form after having been grossly reconstructed in the late 18th century, to prevent the delapidated structure from tumbling down.

Other remarkable monuments of pre-Mongol Russian architecture are scattered in the vicinity. For more information on them, see Suzdal, Yuriev, Bogolyubovo, and Kideksha.

Sister cities

Vladimir is twinned with

• Canterbury in Great Britain,
• Erlangen in Germany (1983).

See also

• Our Lady of Vladimir
• Vladimir-Suzdal

External link

• Information on the City of Vladimir (sites, attrations, tourist info, etc)
• History of Vladimir-on-the-Klyazma

See also: Vladimir, 1108, 1238, 1703, 1983, 2004, Alexander Nevsky