Seven churches at Yaroslav’s Court, surviving Kremlin towers and a museum of wooden architecture in the southern outskirts give a trip to Veliky Novgorod a range of cultural highlights. When planning, it is worth distinguishing the city’s buildings from the attractions in the surrounding area: this makes it possible to shape your stay around the themes that interest you most.

Churches, the Kremlin and medieval buildings

Yaroslav’s Court is located on the trading side of Veliky Novgorod. Its architectural complex includes seven churches. Another landmark is the Novgorod Kremlin: nine of its twelve old towers have survived to this day. Most of the surviving walls and towers date from the late 15th century. When viewing the Kremlin, you can therefore consider both the surviving structures and their recorded period of construction.

The Vladychnaya (Granovitaya) Chamber occupies a place of its own. It is the only surviving secular building from the medieval city, although it has undergone considerable alterations. Together, the churches, Kremlin walls and towers, and this chamber offer a variety of architectural points of interest. Anyone interested in the city’s history will find several tangible features here on which to focus when exploring its built heritage.

Museums in the city and nearby

The Museum of Fine Arts in Veliky Novgorod hosts exhibitions of graphic art. The birch-bark documents among the exhibits also stand out for their number and variety. These collections complement the architectural sights with written records and graphic works, without requiring visitors to plan around a specific time-limited exhibition programme.

The Vitoslavlitsy Museum of Wooden Architecture and Ethnography is located in the southern outskirts of Veliky Novgorod. Its grounds cover 33.4 hectares and contain 34 wooden architecture monuments, including peasant houses, churches, chapels and farm buildings. The museum also presents 18 exhibitions on topics such as the everyday life of Novgorod peasants, traditional occupations and crafts, wedding customs, and folk calendar festivals. The wooden buildings and exhibitions offer different ways to explore the site: the monuments themselves on the one hand, and everyday life, crafts and customs on the other.

The wider travel destination: Novgorod Oblast

Novgorod Oblast also offers its own cultural and landscape attractions, which should be distinguished from what Veliky Novgorod itself has to offer. In Valday, staff at the Bell Museum demonstrate bell-ringing techniques and let visitors try them for themselves. The museum’s bell centre displays bells from around the world, bell forms dating from the 3rd century BC to the Middle Ages, and modern souvenir bells.

An exhibition opened in 1998 at the Museum of the County Town in Valday explores the everyday lives of the town’s residents, the development of local trades, and the lives of individual Valday families and well-known summer visitors to Valday. The museum also preserves the memory of local craftspeople, including stonecutters, carpenters, blacksmiths, bublik bakers, soap makers and bell founders. In 2017, a monument to Valday’s blacksmiths and bell founders was erected in the town. The waterfront promenade in Valday offers a view of the Iversky Monastery.

The Valdai National Park is part of the region’s landscape. It covers 159,100 hectares and extends across the three districts of Valdaysky, Demyansky and Okulovsky in Novgorod Oblast.

Plan your stay and holiday-apartment search

When searching for a holiday apartment, the balance between your travel destinations can be a useful starting point. Would you like to focus on the buildings and museums in Veliky Novgorod, or would you also like to include Vitoslavlitsy in your plans?

Discover more destinations

Discover more destinations: Berezovik, Myasnoy Bor, Toroshino, Trubichino, Volna, Khilovo, Polnovo, Zimogorye

Go to the wider travel guide: Novgorod Oblast.