Western Russia

Russia’s western regions are typified by whitestone churches, the hometowns of Chekhov, Pushkin, Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, snowy winters, summer flower meadows, luxurious springtime foliage, and the vestiges of the thousand-year old Vladimir-Suzdal Rus at your feet. Pilgrims flock here to visit the cave monasteries of Divnogorye, the family residences of the Romanov family and the gigantic building projects of Joseph Stalin – from the memorials to Yuri Gagarin to the bronze busts of the Great Leader of Communism. Foreign tourists like to roam the sandy beaches of the Kurshskaya Kosa national park, located on the Baltic Sea coast of Kaliningrad Region, Russia’s western-lying ‘enclave’.