Rostov

Rostov lies on the shore of Lake Nero and was among the oldest towns of north-eastern Rus', the seat of the Rostov principality from 1207 until 1474. Its rank slipped as Moscow rose: in 1328 the Rostov lands came under Muscovite influence, and boyar families began leaving, among them Cyril, father of Sergius of Radonezh, who had been born in the Varnitsa district near the town. A monastery was built on his birthplace in 1427. Rostov kept its place as a church capital: its bishops became archbishops in the late fourteenth century and metropolitans in 1589, and the see was one of the richest in Russia.

In 1608 Tushino bands burned and plundered Rostov and carried off Metropolitan Filaret, the future patriarch; Sapieha's army sacked the town again in 1611. The Epiphany Cathedral of the Abraham Monastery was built at Ivan IV's expense in honour of the conquest of Kazan, and the church of St Isidore the Blessed was rebuilt in stone in 1565. Under Metropolitan Jonah Sysoyevich, from the 1660s to the 1690s, the bishop's court grew into the Rostov Kremlin around the old Dormition Cathedral and its bell tower of fifteen bells. In the later eighteenth century the Rostov fair drew merchants, but the see moved to Yaroslavl in 1786.