St George Church of Staraya Ladoga

The St George church stands inside the Staraya Ladoga fortress, on the bank of the Volkhov — in a village which, by some chronicles, was the first residence of Rurik before he moved to Novgorod. Ladoga arose, by archaeology, in the mid-eighth century — the oldest dendrochronological date is 753 — and stood on the great trade route from the Varangians to the Greeks; its weight in the twelfth century was the weight of a capital. Stone building in the town began in the 1110s, and in the second half of that century seven or eight stone churches were raised — of which only two survive: this church and the Dormition cathedral of the Staraya Ladoga monastery. Together they are the northernmost Russian stone churches of the pre-Mongol period. The exact date of the St George church is unknown: the details of its architecture and painting suggest a time between 1180 and 1200; in written sources the church is first mentioned only in 1445. By tradition, the temple was raised to St George the Victorious — in memory of the defeat of the Swedes in the battle on the Voronezhka river. Its chief treasure is the fragments of unique twelfth-century frescoes: a sixteenth-century rebuild left the interior untouched, but the restoration of 1683–1684 cut new windows and destroyed part of the wall painting. What survived is among the oldest painting of Rus: scenes with St George the dragon-slayer are readable in the north, where almost no stone monuments of that era have survived. The church is inactive, a federal architectural monument; its architecture is typical of the Novgorod school of building. Restorations ran in waves — in 1902, 1925–1928, 1952–1962 and the 1970s–1990s. Inside there is dusk and coolness, as pre-Mongol stone demands; the frescoes are lit sparingly. Combine the visit with the fortress and the Staraya Ladoga museum reserve — they are two steps away.