When we awoke, we looked out of our ship cabin window for our first view of the church. It was a three hundred year old building decked with lots of onion shaped domes, dramatically standing on the little island.

It was 1996 and we were on a ten day cruise tour from St. Petersburg to Moscow via waterways - rivers, lakes and canals - an unusual journey that was opened to foreign visitors just five years ago.

Kizhi is in far northern part of Russia, in the Republic of Karelia and the remarkable collection of historic buildings has ... (more)