 Folk singer / Cathedral of the Transfiguration, Yaroslavl |
 by Philip Game
One nun chants at a lectern as another joins two peasant women to watch from the back of the whitewashed chapel, warmed by the slanting sun. Through the many-paned windows a suitably-shrouded sister can be seen tending bee hives amidst an orchard ablaze with blossom.
On a summer evening in the thousand-year-old town of Suzdal, nothing surpasses the ethereal beauty of evensong in the chapel of the Russian Orthodox Convent of the Intercession of the Virgin.
Moscow and St Petersburg are Russia’s showpiece destinations, but the Golden Ring of historic towns and cities, northeast of Moscow, offers a rewarding glimpse of provincial Russia’s charms. This fertile land of forests and meadows gave birth to much of the cultural heritage which Russia celebrates anew in the post-Soviet era.
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