Pogostishche

Pogostishche lies in the wooded upper Desna country, where the rivers west of the Oka flow toward the Dnieper. The old town of Bryansk stood on the Desna and became the centre of a principality after the Mongol invasions. Its lands later passed under Lithuanian rule and then to Moscow in the early sixteenth century. Small villages and church sites lay among the forests beyond the town, in a region crossed by routes between the Dnieper and upper Oka basins.