Sol Galichskaya

Sol Galichskaya takes its name from the salt springs on the upper Kostroma River. Salt boilers and the nearby Resurrection monastery gave rise to a settlement in the forests north of Galich. By the end of the fourteenth century salt was being made at several wells, their brine boiled down in pans to produce a commodity valuable far beyond the district.

A later monastery chronicle dates the foundation of the Resurrection monastery to 1335. The saltworks and monastery required protection on an exposed frontier, and in 1532 the town’s fortress resisted an attack by forces from Kazan. The monastery’s seventeenth-century Resurrection Cathedral replaced earlier buildings, while the town continued to be known by the industry that had first made its springs valuable.