Plyos Russia
Russia
Frequently Asked Questions
At the landing on the Volga, at the foot of the town. Plyos has barely a few thousand residents and everything is walkable from the quay: the lower street runs along the river right from the gangway.
Yes, entirely. The lower street follows the river, past 19th-century merchant houses and wooden homes with carved lacework around the windows. Paths and stairways then climb to the heights — the only real effort of the day.
The Levitan house museum on the quay, the Landscape Museum a few steps away, then the climb to Cathedral Hill for the view. Finish with smoked river fish on the waterfront.
Isaac Levitan, the Russian painter who arrived here in the late 1880s looking for subjects. He found gentle hills, onion-domed churches above the Volga and a light that would run through all of Russian landscape painting. One painter was enough to make the town immortal.
The house where the painter stayed between 1888 and 1890, now a museum: original canvases, sketches and objects that recreate the atmosphere of his working summers. The rooms are modest, like the house itself — which is precisely what moves you.
A museum in a merchant house a few steps from the Levitan house. Its collection gathers Russian painters of nature, from Shishkin to Savrasov, and traces how the genre became a national art form in the 19th century.
The Cathedral of the Assumption, on Cathedral Hill — the site of the 15th-century fortress — and, further on, the Church of the Resurrection, whose domes rise above the painted metal roofs.
It takes some breath but stays short. The reward is immediate: the Volga spreads out below, broad and calm, with the forests of the far bank behind. This is the view Levitan painted.
Smoked Volga fish, the local speciality, served with black bread at stalls and small tables on the quay. Cafés serve tea and Russian pastries in wood-panelled rooms.
May through September, when ships link the Volga towns. It is also the season of the light Levitan was after: birches in leaf and long summer evenings give the place its whole character.
