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Kostroma is the capital of Kostroma Oblast, set on the Volga about 300 kilometers northeast of Moscow, where the Kostroma River joins the great river. It had about 266,000 people in 2024 and is one of the classic towns of the Golden Ring of old Russian cities.
Tradition says Prince Yury Dolgoruky founded the town in 1152, and in the 13th century it became the seat of its own principality. After a great fire in 1773 the center was rebuilt to a regular plan of 1781-1784, which gave Kostroma one of the finest classical town centers in Russia and a model ensemble of trading rows.
Today visitors walk from Susaninskaya Square with its fire tower and long trading rows to the kremlin park above the river, where the bell tower of the Epiphany Cathedral rises again. Old monasteries, a 17th-century church on the Volga bank and an open-air museum of wooden buildings complete the visit.
The Ipatiev Monastery stands in the west of Kostroma on the Kostroma River near its mouth into the Volga, first mentioned in the chronicles in 1432. Its high stone walls enclose the Old and New Towns around the five-domed Trinity Cathedral, and the famous Ipatiev Chronicle was found there.
The Epiphany-Anastasia Convent in Kostroma was founded by Saint Nikita, a disciple and relative of Sergius of Radonezh, and has been a convent since 1847. Its Epiphany Cathedral, begun in 1559 with gifts from Prince Vladimir Staritsky, is the oldest surviving stone building in the city.
The Church of the Resurrection on the Debre stands on the left bank of the Volga in Kostroma and is the only surviving 17th-century church of the old town quarter, built no later than 1652. Legend says the first wooden church here was raised by Prince Vasily Yaroslavich for his huntsmen.
The Church of Saint John the Theologian stands in the old Ipatiev quarter of Kostroma, close to the Ipatiev Monastery. Built in 1681-1687 after a fire destroyed the wooden church of 1562, it gained new chapels in the 18th and early 20th centuries and a stone fence with three gates by 1811.
Susaninskaya Square is the central square of Kostroma, laid out under the regular plan of 1781-1784 and first named Ekaterinoslavskaya. Paved in 1823 and renamed in 1835 by order of Nicholas I, it is framed by a complete ensemble of classical buildings from the late 18th and 19th centuries.
The Kostroma Fire Tower is a masterpiece of classical architecture and the main ornament of Susaninskaya Square, built in 1824-1825 to a design by the provincial architect Pyotr Fursov. Governor Karl Baumgarten wanted a tower that would both guard the town against fires and adorn its square.
The Trading Rows of Kostroma fill several blocks between Susaninskaya Square and the old kremlin, a model ensemble of the town reform of Catherine the Great. Built in stone from 1775 after a great fire, they follow a plan in which every shop of 4.5 by 7 meters has its own arch of the gallery.
The Borshchov House on Susaninskaya Square is one of the largest classical mansions in Kostroma, built from 1824 for General S. S. Borshchov to a design by the provincial architect N. I. Metlin. Nicholas I stayed there, as did the young heir Alexander II with the poet Vasily Zhukovsky in 1834.
The Kostroma Kremlin was the historic heart of the city on a high hill on the left bank of the Volga, though its walls were taken down over the 17th to 19th centuries. Its site is now the central park, where a rotunda known as the Ostrovsky Gazebo now marks the old entrance to its grounds.
The Epiphany Cathedral in the Kostroma Kremlin was built in 1776-1791 by Stepan Vorotilov in the late Baroque style, with a 64-meter bell tower that guided ships on the Volga. Destroyed in 1934, it was rebuilt in 2016-2023 and became the cathedral of the diocese on 25 September 2023.
The Romanov Museum in Kostroma was built in 1909-1913 to a design by N. I. Gorlitsyn for the 300th anniversary of the Romanov dynasty, and it opened on 19 May 1913 in the presence of Nicholas II. In the Russian Revival style, it is one of the main buildings of the Kostroma museum reserve.
The Museum of Wooden Architecture in Kostroma is one of the oldest open-air museums in Russia, set beside the south wall of the Ipatiev Monastery where the Kostroma flows into the Volga. Its old timber buildings include a church of 1552, the oldest wooden church in Central Russia.
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