Murom: Preserving the history of a medieval principality

At the beginning of the 20th century, Russian chemist and photographer Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky developed a complex process for vivid, detailed color photography. His vision of photography as a form of education and enlightenment was demonstrated with special clarity through his photographs of medieval architecture in historic settlements northeast of Moscow such as Vladimir, which he visited in the Summer of 1911.

Among Prokudin-Gorsky’s several views of Vladimir is a dramatic photograph with the Dormition Cathedral overlooking the steep left bank of the Klyazma River. The Klyazma eventually winds its way toward a confluence with the Oka River, a major tributary of the mighty Volga River. 

Murom’s origins

On its way to the Volga, the Oka flows past the picturesque town of Murom, adorned with churches and monasteries on the river’s high left bank. Indeed, Murom is one of the easternmost towns in Vladimir Province. Across the river is the territory of Nizhny Novgorod.

Named after the Muroma, a Finno-Ugric tribe, ancient Murom has been overshadowed by other historic towns such as Suzdal and by industrial behemoths such as Nizhny Novgorod, located at the confluence of the Oka with the Volga.

Murom, however, has earned an enduring place in the Russian imagination as the abode of two of Russia’s most beloved saints, prince Peter and his wife Fevronia; and as the land of the legendary Russian hero, or bogatyr, Ilya Muromets (Elijah of Murom).

Being one of the oldest of Russian towns, Murom is mentioned in medieval chronicles under the year 862 as part of the domains of Riurik, the viking who is considered the founder of the first Russian dynasty. Thereafter, Murom repeatedly appears among the towns granted to Riurik’s descendants.

A succession of princes

These early princes include the pious Gleb (ca. 987-1015), one of the many sons of Grand Prince Vladimir of Kiev, who formally converted the Eastern Slavs to Christianity in 988. According to medieval accounts Gleb’s zealous Christian faith alienated his pagan subjects, who rejected conversion and expelled him to a fortified residence on the outskirts Murom.

After the death of Prince Vladimir in 1015, Gleb and his brother Boris were assassinated near Kiev in a fratricidal struggle for the throne. Refusing to engage in violence, Boris and Gleb were subsequently canonized by the Orthodox Church.

Never a major power center, Murom was passed among various princes in complex divisions of authority over the vast territory of medieval Rus’. By the end of the 11th century, prince Yaroslav, son of Svyatoslav of Chernigov, finally subdued local resistance to Christianity.

Tatar invasion & brick churches

During the 13th century Murom was sacked by Tatar forces in 1239, 1281 and 1288. Feuding among local princes further weakened the town’s autonomy and, by the end of the 14th century, it entered the domains of the rapidly expanding Moscow principality.

With its advantageous location on the Oka River, Murom served as an important eastern outpost in the defense of Moscow against attacks from the Tatar state of Kazan. With the reign of Ivan the Terrible (1547-84), the town’s military importance dramatically increased in the early 1550s, when Ivan made preparations for the final attack on Kazan, in 1552.

In the decade after the conquest of the Tatar capital, Ivan had four brick churches built in Murom as a votive offering.

Only one of those churches still exists with basic elements of its original form: the compact Church of Saints Kosma and Demyan overlooking the Oka River. Its most distinctive feature, a soaring brick “tent” tower resembling that of St. Basil’s in Moscow, collapsed in 1868.

In 1901, the walls were covered with a low roof, which was surmounted in 2010 by a metal-sheathed conical roof, ornate in style, but much lower than the original. 

Orthodox ‘mecca’

Following the conquest of Kazan, Murom’s strategic role diminished, and the town became a provincial backwater with regional commercial significance. Yet, Murom remained a religious and pilgrimage center with a rich concentration of monastic institutions in the 17th and 18th centuries. After decades of neglect during the Soviet period, the monasteries and parish churches are being restored to impressive effect. 

The most ancient of Murom’s monasteries is dedicated to the Transfiguration of the Savior and is situated to the south of town on a steep bank overlooking the Oka River. Legend has it that the monastery occupies the site of Prince Gleb’s fortified refuge. The earliest written reference dates from 1096, but its oldest structure – the Church of the Transfiguration – was built in the 1550s and has been substantially reconstructed. 

The frescoes of the Transfiguration Church have been repainted, and the crypt contains a sarcophagus with relics of Ilya Muromets – who specialists believe was originally from a settlement near Kiev. Other churches, chapels and cloisters are spread around the spacious, park-like territory of the Transfiguration Monastery, which has become a major pilgrimage site. 

‘Time of Troubles’ & ‘Resurrection’

The center of Murom is graced with the ornate towers and churches of adjacent monastic institutions: the Monastery of the Annunciation and the Trinity Convent. The Annunciation Monastery was founded by Ivan the Terrible in 1553, but nothing has been preserved from that time.

The monastery was destroyed in 1616 when Polish forces devastated Murom during the Time of Troubles. Its main Church of the Annunciation was lavishly rebuilt in the 1660s by the wealthy merchant Taras Borisov, known among the people as Bogdan Tsvetnoy (‘the colorful’).

In the 1640s, the same merchant endowed the nearby Trinity Convent, whose ornate Church of the Holy Trinity is decorated with ceramic tiles.

Its interior contains the relics of Saints Peter and Fevronia, canonized in 1547 and revered as examples of conjugal fidelity. Although their precise historical identity is subject to question, the 16th-century account of their life together is known by every student of medieval Russian literature. 

The north part of Murom is graced by the Convent of the Resurrection, whose 17th-century churches are now being restored. Like the Transfiguration Monastery at the other end of Murom, the Resurrection Convent has a sweeping high view of the Oka River. 

Entering the 20th century

Murom still has a few early 19th-century stuccoed brick mansions built in a neoclassical style. Major fires destroyed the largely wooden urban environment in 1805 and the town was rebuilt to a geometric plan formulated during the reign of Catherine the Great.

Murom also has neighborhoods with wooden houses from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with their distinctive ornate window frames and decorative cornices. In some cases, the wooden structure rests on a brick ground floor.

By the turn of the 20th century, Murom had become a railway center with important textile factories. The town has seen its share of economic difficulties in recent decades, with a population decline to a current level of around 107,000.

Although parts of central Murom were rebuilt during the Soviet period, numerous pre-revolutionary buildings still stand, and they provide the town center with an attractive human scale. 

In the early 20th century, Russian photographer Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky developed a complex process for color photography. Between 1903 and 1916, he traveled through the Russian Empire and took over 2,000 photographs with the process, which involved three exposures on a glass plate. In August 1918, he left Russia and ultimately resettled in France, where he was reunited with a large part of his collection of glass negatives, as well as 13 albums of contact prints. After his death in Paris in 1944, his heirs sold the collection to the Library of Congress. In the early 21st century, the Library digitized the Prokudin-Gorsky Collection and made it freely available to the global public. A few Russian websites now have versions of the collection. In 1986, architectural historian and photographer William Brumfield organized the first exhibit of Prokudin-Gorsky photographs at the Library of Congress. Over a period of work in Russia, beginning in 1970, Brumfield has photographed most of the sites visited by Prokudin-Gorsky. This series of articles juxtaposes Prokudin-Gorsky’s views of architectural monuments with photographs taken by Brumfield decades later.