Kostroma

Kostroma (russ: Кострома) is a historic city in central Russia, administrative centre of the Kostroma Oblast. A part of the Golden ring of the Russian towns, it is located at the confluence of the rivers Volga and Kostroma, 65 km east of Yaroslavl. It is served by Kostroma Airport.

The city was first recorded in the chronicles for the year 1213, but historians believe it could have been founded by Yury Dolgoruky more than half a century earlier. Like other towns of the Eastern Rus, Kostroma was sacked by the tatars-mongols in 1238.

Kostroma was twice ravaged by the Poles; it took a 6-month siege to expel them from the Ipatievsky monastery. The heroic peasant Ivan Susanin became a symbol of the city's resistance to foreign invaders; several monuments to him may be seen in Kostroma. The future tsar, Michael Romanov, also lived at the monastery. It was here that an embassy from Moscow offered him the Russian crown in 1612.

Built in 1559-65, the 5-domed Epiphany Cathedral was the first stone edifice in the city; its medieval frescoes perished during a fire several years ago. The minster houses the city's most precious relic, a 10th-century Byzantine icon called Our Lady of St. Theodore (Russian: Федоровская Богоматерь). It was with this icon that Mikhail Romanov was blessed by his mother when he left for Moscow to claim the Russian throne. They say that just before the Revolution the icon blackened so badly that the image was hardly visible; it was interpreted as a bad sign for the Romanov dynasty.

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