Golden Ring by Car: Four-Day Route

The Golden Ring is convenient because distances between cities are short: from one to another is rarely more than an hour and a half. Almost everyone's mistake when going for the first time is trying to cover eight cities in three days. It turns into a road rally with stops at parking lots.

Four days and five cities — that's the scale where there's still time to walk around.

Day One: Sergiev Posad

Seventy kilometers from Moscow, and this is the right start: Trinity Sergius Lavra sets the scale for everything else. Founded in the fourteenth century, surrounded by walls since the sixteenth, and inside stands the cathedral for which Andrei Rublev painted the "Trinity".

The Lavra takes half a day. Then — one hundred eighty kilometers to Vladimir via highways M8 and M7, about three hours considering traffic jams on the exit.

Day Two: Vladimir

Capital of Northeastern Rus before Moscow. Assumption Cathedral of the twelfth century with Rublev's frescoes, Demetrius Cathedral with carving across the entire facade — more than a thousand figures on stone — and Golden Gate, the only one preserved out of five.

Ten kilometers away, in Bogolyubovo, stands the Church of the Intercession on the Nerl. You walk to it across the meadow for about one and a half kilometers — leave the car at the station. In spring the meadow floods, and the church stands on an island.

Day Three: Suzdal

Thirty-five kilometers from Vladimir. Suzdal is a city without industry and almost without high-rise buildings: the height restriction law has been observed here since the sixties, and so the view from any point is almost museum-like.

Suzdal Kremlin with the Nativity Cathedral, St. Euthymius Monastery with fortress walls and a belfry where they give a bell concert every hour, and open-air museum of wooden architecture.

Suzdal is best explored on foot: the city is three kilometers long, and parking in the center on weekends is a separate challenge.

Day Four: Yaroslavl and Kostroma

One hundred eighty kilometers from Suzdal to Yaroslavl. In the city stands the Transfiguration Monastery, where a copy of "The Tale of Igor's Campaign" was found, and the Church of Elijah the Prophet with seventeenth-century frescoes preserved entirely.

Kostroma is seventy kilometers further. There is the Ipatiev Monastery, from where the first Romanov was called to the throne in 1613, and the trading rows — a whole quarter of stone galleries from the late eighteenth century, still serving their purpose.

About the Road

Highways M7 and M8 are decent, but narrow in places and with heavy truck traffic. Gas stations are everywhere, fuel quality is predictable at chain stations.

Hotels in Suzdal and Yaroslavl are booked up in advance on weekends, especially in summer and on holidays. Parking lots near monasteries are paid and small; it makes sense to arrive before ten in the morning.

The best time is May, June, and September. In winter the cities are also good, but the daylight hours are short, and you shouldn't count on two cities per day.