Mologa

Mologa stood at the meeting of the Mologa and Volga rivers. It belonged first to the principality of Rostov and then to Yaroslavl, before becoming the center of an independent principality in 1321. Ivan III later brought it under Moscow's rule. The former ruling family moved to Moscow, where its descendants became known as the princes Prozorovsky and Shakhovskoy. The diplomat Sigismund von Herberstein recorded a fortress at Mologa.

In the late fifteenth century a fair was transferred here from Kholopiy Gorodok farther north. Mologa consequently developed into an important trading center for exchange with Asian countries. After the turmoil of the early seventeenth century it prospered as a trading sloboda. Its place on the Volga later acquired another advantage with the Tikhvin water system, which connected the Volga basin to the Baltic Sea and made Mologa a staging point on the route.