You have to go here after experiencing a couple of unhappy loves, having experienced disappointments, having suffered losses, paying off debts, having burned out and being reborn, and most importantly, having re-read the “Reserve”, and indeed all of Dovlatov.

Then, on the way to the Pskov region, all the poems of Alexander Sergeevich memorized in school years will be remembered.

  • The Pushkin Reserve is a space for inspiration: ancient villages and the Holy Assumption Monastery, forests and wide meadows, small lakes and the Sorot River, along which there are three estates. Petrovsky was built by the poet’s great-grandfather, Abram Gannibal.
  • The Osipovs lived in Trigorskoye, and “our everything” often visited them. In Mikhailovsky, which was owned by Pushkin’s mother, he served a two-year exile.

Little has changed here in a couple of centuries. The river still flows slowly, in autumn ripe apples pull back branches, ancient elms shed their leaves.

  • In Trigorskoye, there is still a pavilion built around a huge oak tree, in Petrovsky, pike are caught and bicentennial lindens creak. The estates themselves — repeatedly burned and rebuilt — were almost lost, but they were restored according to the surviving drawings and descriptions.
  • But the house of Sergei Dovlatov in the village of Berezino, which has become a museum, makes the same terrible impression as in the summer of 1977, when a writer who worked as a guide lived here under a sagging roof.
  • The Pushkin Reserve offers a wide range of thematic excursions that cover all the estates in the Pushkin Mountains, the ancient settlements of Savkina Gorka and Voronich, the village of Berezino, the village of Bugrovo. Also, master classes in Russian literature, folk crafts and even animation are held in the reserve.

Savkina Gorka Savkina Gorka

  • All roads here lead to Krom — that was the name of the Pskov Kremlin in the old days. Having passed the Dovmontov city, built to protect the settlement, we will approach the Trinity Cathedral.

The current building, already the fourth in a row, was built three centuries ago on the same site where one of the first Christian churches in Rus’ was erected in the 10th century by decree of Princess Olga.

  • Somewhere inside the Gremyachy Tower, according to the legend, the prince’s daughter sleeps soundly.
  • And outside — merchant houses on the old streets and the Mirozhsky Monastery with the Transfiguration Cathedral. It is painted from top to bottom with stunning frescoes by unknown Byzantine masters of the 12th century.

Ten Pskov churches, cathedrals and monasteries are included in the UNESCO World Heritage List . They are united by a 4.5 km long walking route, but it is better to get to the Svyatogorsky Monastery by taxi or bus.