The Volga is more than half a kilometre wide here, and Kostroma opens onto it like a fan: after the great fire of 1773, Catherine II's urban planners redesigned the streets as spokes converging on a single esplanade facing the river. River cruise ships dock at the foot of this 18th-century plan, which remains intact. Service to this port call depends on current circumstances and itineraries; the city's most precious features, however, have not changed in four centuries, and that is what this guide describes.

Cradle of the Romanovs

Upstream from the centre, where the Kostroma River meets the great river, the Ipatiev Monastery gathers its white churches and golden domes behind a wall. It was here, in 1613, that the young Mikhail Romanov learned that the national assembly had just offered him the throne: three hundred years of dynasty began behind these walls, at the end of the period of chaos that Russians call the Time of Troubles. The Trinity Cathedral preserves an interior painted from floor to vaults, with a gilded iconostasis that catches the faintest glow of the candles. Even without a guide, the place commands silence, and visitors lower their voices without being asked.

Merchant Arcades, Still in Business

Heading back down to the centre, you pass through the Gostiny Dvor, the finest ensemble of neoclassical merchant arcades preserved in provincial Russia. About ten colonnaded buildings, erected after the 1773 fire, frame courtyards where merchants still sell today as they did in the past: embroidered linen, honey, forest berries and the famous local cheese, a regional pride you can taste at the corner of a counter. Nothing has been turned into a museum; the Red Rows and the flour halls are still working shops, and that is what makes the stroll so lively: you're not touring a stage set, you're shopping alongside the town.

Susanin Square and Its Tower

All the streets of the fan converge on Susanin Square, named in honour of the peasant who, according to tradition, saved the first Romanov by leading an enemy troop astray in the frozen marshes. The square's dominant feature is the fire tower, built in the 1820s: thirty-five metres of classical columns and belvedere, so elegant that you might mistake it for a commemorative monument rather than a lookout post. Around it, the pastel façades of the old mansions form one of the most harmonious urban ensembles on the upper Volga, best photographed late in the day, when the light grazes the colonnades.

Home of the Snow Maiden

Kostroma has also given itself a fairy-tale role: Russian tradition makes it the home of Snegurochka, the Snow Maiden, granddaughter of Grandfather Frost. Her residence can be visited, to the delight of families, and the shops feature her image on dolls, lace and glass ornaments. This mix of legend, commerce and dynastic history sums up the place rather well: here, the centuries don't pile up, they share the same wooden and stone sidewalks, between a cheese shop and a monastery gate.

From the ship's deck at departure, you watch the fan slowly close: the watchtower, the colonnades, then the domes of Ipatiev among the trees on the bank. Kostroma is one of those Volga stops that don't strive for effect. It leaves travellers with soft light on classical façades, the scent of polished wood in a painted cathedral, and the urge to keep following the river to the other towns of the Golden Ring.