Private Full-Day Trip to Velikiy Novgorod from St. Petersburg

The guide and driver on personal car pick you up from your hotel in St Petersburg. It takes 2,5 hours to get to Novgorod, the road is very picturesque as well as full of history, the guide will start the story from the beginning. Russian landscapes and surrounding forests on the road to Novgorod are like preparing the guests to visit the spiritual center of Russian Orthodoxy. Veliky Novgorod also known as Novgorod the Great, or Novgorod Veliky, or just Novgorod, is one of the most important historic cities in Russia, It is situated on the federal highway connecting Moscow and St. Petersburg. The city lies along the Volkhov River just downstream from its outflow from Lake Ilmen.

Situated on the Volkhov River along an old trade route between Central Asia and Northern Europe, this medieval city became Russia's first capital in the 9th century. Your guide will point out the many remarkable churches, monasteries and medieval monuments as you learn about their historical and cultural significance.

Novgorod Kremlin (also Detinets) stands on the left bank of the Volkhov River in Veliky Novgorod about two miles north of where it empties out of Lake Ilmen.

Visit St Sophia's Cathedral, one of Russia’s best-preserved churches built in the 11th century and still in use today, and admire the stone walls, five domes and 12th-century frescoes. See the Church of the Savior with its frescoes painted by Theophanes the Greek, who lived in Novgorod in the late 14th century. The Millennium of Russia is a bronze monument also in the Novgorod Kremlin. It was erected in 1862 to celebrate the millennium of Rurik's arrival to Novgorod, an event traditionally taken as a starting point of the history of Russian statehood.

Explore the old marketplace on the bank of the Volkhov River. Enjoy a traditional Russian lunch in a local restaurant center of Novgorod. Then head to the Russia’s oldest monastery, St.George's Cathedral (Yuriev) on the riverbank.

Very close to the monastery is next unique point-outdoor Museum of Wooden Russian Architecture, where one can see different types of houses and churches made of only wood, without nails.

Are you interesting to see and have a talk with a real Orthodox Father? Then we have a compliment for you from our guide-visit to a Father Dmitry, who will talk to you and open only for you 12th century Nativity Church built by Byzantines.