Zvenigorod is one of the old towns of the Moscow region, set on a high bluff above the Moskva River about fifty kilometres west of the capital, and it has long been a favourite place for city people to escape to. Its Russian nickname, the Russian Switzerland, is generous, but the wooded hills, the river bends and the onion domes among the birches do make a gentle, harmonious landscape. About sixteen thousand people live here today, and the place has fuel, shops, cafés and a quiet, provincial air.
The town's story begins in the fourteenth century, when it was the seat of a princely appanage, and a fortress stood on the hill called Gorodok. The Dormition Cathedral there, built around 1399, is one of the oldest surviving stone churches in the region and contains remnants of medieval frescoes attributed to the school of Andrei Rublev. A few kilometres away, the Savvino-Storozhevsky Monastery, founded in 1398 by the monk Savva at the invitation of Prince Yuri, is a handsome walled complex with white-stone churches, bright towers and a long role in the history of Russia's tsars, who favoured it as a retreat.
In the nineteenth century, Zvenigorod became a summer resort, and artists and writers came to stay. The painter Isaac Levitan worked here in the 1880s and left landscapes that made the hills famous, and Anton Chekhov served as a district doctor in 1884 and 1885, treating local people while he wrote. Their names are still tied to the town, with memorial museums and walks.
For a rider, the roads in the area are gentle and scenic, with smooth country lanes winding through birch forest and meadow, fields of rye and small villages with wooden houses. Mozhaisk Highway is busy, particularly at weekends when Muscovites head for their dachas, so go early. Summer is warm and green, autumn is golden, and winter is cold and snowy, and the surface can be icy. Fill up before you go, enjoy a plate of pelmeni or a bowl of soup in a café, and walk the monastery walls in the evening.