Cathedral Hill and the Monument to the 800th Anniversary of Vologda

The high right bank near Sophia Cathedral is called Cathedral Hill, after the cathedral that stands above the river. The square here was laid out for the visit of Alexander the First in eighteen twenty-four. The neighboring historic site, Lazy Square, begins beside the obelisk. Its name is most often associated with Lazy Market: merchants sold fish, furs, and other goods straight from their carts, without laying them out in stalls. Wedding motorcades now come here, while the old market still goes on in the bronze relief on the northern face.

The inscription on another face reads: “In memory of the eight hundredth anniversary of Vologda. Eleven forty-seven to nineteen forty-seven.” The first date appeared here thanks to Alexei Zasetsky, a retired captain-lieutenant of the Preobrazhensky Regiment and a Vologda landowner. He compiled the city’s first printed history and maintained a large library and a collection of antiquities. In seventeen eighty, Zasetsky published a book in which he retold a late church tale about Gerasim of Vologda.

The tale itself was composed around sixteen sixty-six. According to the tradition contained in it, the monk Gerasim came to the Vologda River in eleven forty-seven and founded Trinity Monastery. Zasetsky linked this arrival to the beginning of the city. His book established the date, and it was later adopted officially.

In nineteen forty-seven, Semyon Goglev, chairman of the city executive committee, headed a commission tasked with holding the eight hundredth jubilee. After the difficult war years, one hundred thousand rubles from the regional budget were authorized for the celebration. On September twenty-eighth, exactly at noon, Goglev unveiled a foundation stone on Lazy Square, promising that an obelisk would be raised here. The celebration continued at the stadium, while a stone inscription remained in place of the future monument.

The promise was fulfilled twelve years later. Vologda sculptors, the married couple Tekusa and Gennady Kontarev, prepared a seven-meter granite obelisk and four bronze reliefs. The monument was installed in nineteen fifty-nine, but the jubilee dates were left unchanged. Hence the twelve-year discrepancy between the inscription and the age of the monument itself.

Archaeologists have not yet found objects on Lazy Square older than the thirteenth century. The first written mention of Vologda, created at the same time as the events it describes, dates to twelve sixty-four. Eleven forty-seven remains a date from a late tradition.

The site for the obelisk was chosen in the wake of this tradition, although Gerasim’s monastery was placed by Kaisarov Creek, about half a poprishe from the river. Another church stood beneath the present monument: Resurrection Church at Lazy Market. Its stone building was demolished in nineteen thirty-six. The northern relief returns the church to its former place: behind the merchants and barrels of fish, the wooden walls of the church are visible, and above them rises the granite erected twelve years after the jubilee.