Chukhloma

Chukhloma stands on the shore of a broad lake in the forest country north of Galich. Across the water, the Abraham-Gorodets monastery occupies the site of an older fortified settlement. The lakeside town belonged to the principality of Galich, whose princes held these forested northern lands.

Chukhloma appears in the chronicle in 1381, when the disputed metropolitan Pimen was sent here into confinement. In the following century the Galich princes Yuri Dmitriyevich and his sons contested the throne of Moscow with Vasily II, bringing their northern appanage into a long dynastic struggle. Chukhloma remained a small place: a census in 1678 counted 67 households in the town. Roads led along the lake toward the monastery and Soligalich, south to Galich, and east toward Parfenyevo and Unzha.