Kholmogory

Kholmogory stands on a branch of the Northern Dvina, amid the islands and channels of the great river's lower course. Known as Kolmogory in a fourteenth-century charter, it became an administrative and trading centre of the Russian North. The Dvina linked its merchants with inland towns, while the White Sea opened a route to distant shores.

In 1553 the English navigator Richard Chancellor reached the Dvina, opening a sea route between England and Russia. English merchants established a trading office and warehouses at Kholmogory, exchanging goods from the West for products of the northern forests and farms. The founding of Arkhangelsk nearer the sea later shifted foreign commerce downstream. Kholmogory nevertheless remained an ecclesiastical centre: a new diocese was established in 1682, and Archbishop Athanasius began the large Transfiguration Cathedral, built between 1685 and 1691.