The town having been founded somewhere around the 10th century, but is nonetheless one of Russia's oldest cities. Its architecture reflects its heydays as a major player in the salt trade and wealthy city of the Novgorod Republic, and again as a fashionable 19th century spa resort. It has always attracted guests from far and wide. Today, it draws in visitors who seek to trace the footsteps of one of Russia's greatest writers and perhaps the one who made the greatest impression abroad, Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky.  Dostoevsky himself was deeply religious and the church he attended here, the Grigoryevsky church, is just one of a number of charming medieval churches of all shapes and colours that the town can boast. The town's Spaso-Preobrazhensky Monastery also has a few fine examples of small wooden-domed churches.
Getting there from Veliky Novgorod:
There are numerous buses a day leaving from the central bus station at Oktyabrskaya ul. 1.