The Church of the Nativity of Our Lady from Peredki

The open-air museum of wooden architecture introduces visitors to all kinds of wooden buildings - churches, mills, peasant cottages, granaries - dating back to different periods but not earlier than the 16th century. (It is appropriate to mention here that already in the 11th century men of other Russian lands, when speaking of Novgorodians, would call them 'carpenters'.) Among these the Church of the Nativity of Our Lady from Peredki (16th century) stands out for its structural perfection. Stemming from the Kuritsko Church is the Dormition, an icon painted in the 14th century (now in the Novgorod Museum of History, Architecture and Art). The remarkable icon of St Nicholas from the Church of the Nativity, probably also belonging to the 14th century, is kept at the Hermitage in Leningrad. The museum continues to expand, combining in its already extensive exhibition the most characteristic types of civil and religious structures which interiors contain various ethnographic material.