Suzdal

Recently we visited the city of Vladimir and the smaller town of Suzdal, as a part of our language and cultural studies. Both places were founded in the 900's and were major religious and cultural centers in early Russia. Both towns were conquered when the Tatars from the southeast, invaded northern Russia and subjugated it for several hundered years. Vladimir is now a large Russian industrial city, but still has many well preserved historical and cultural sites. Suzdal is in many ways a good picture of ancient Russia, retaining the small town feel and look. The town has numerous churches and monastaries some of which are nearly 1000 years old.

Suzdal Churches

We really enjoyed our brief visit and appreciated gaining some more cultural insight. We thought that you might enjoy a few photos from the trip.

Here are some Silver and Gold covered New Testaments

These are beautiful, but our thought was that if the Church had invested their time and money into teaching people to read, instead of making God's Word into an expensive piece of art then the whole history of Russia may have been different.

Cathedral inside of a Monastary