Yelets

About Yelets

Yelets is one of the oldest towns of central Russia, first mentioned in the chronicles in 1146 and standing on a high bank above the Bystraya Sosna River. It survived raids by the Golden Horde and destruction by Timur in 1395 to grow, by the nineteenth century, into a rich merchant town known for grain trading and fine bobbin lace.

That merchant wealth is still visible in streets of brick and wooden houses and in an extraordinary number of churches for a town of its size. Above them all rises the Ascension Cathedral, designed by Konstantin Thon, the architect of Moscow's Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, and visible from far across the river valley.

Yelets also has strong literary and musical links. The writer Ivan Bunin went to school here and the composer Tikhon Khrennikov was born here, and both have house museums in town. It is an easy and rewarding stop on the road between Moscow and Voronezh, with the limestone cliffs of the Galichya Gora reserve close by.