Yukhnov

Yukhnov grew beside a monastery on the Ugra, at the meeting of river routes in the old border country west of Kaluga. The Yukhnov hermitage was devastated during the Time of Troubles and later rebuilt. In 1657 its superior petitioned for the return of lands that had passed to other owners, explaining that the monks lacked fields and meadows on which to live.

In the eighteenth century stone churches and buildings replaced the monastery’s earlier wooden structures. The settlement beside its walls became a district town in 1777, when Catherine II moved the local offices here and named the town Yukhnov after the monastery. The Ugra continued eastward toward the Oka, linking the monastery and town to the wider Oka river valley.