Metravel city quest
City Gomel: free walking route “quest: Spasova Sloboda” along the sights. 4 points. Approximately 1 h 15 min. Quests and legends - straight from your
This quest has an unusual address: the place you are about to walk through does not appear on modern maps. Once, right inside Gomel, there was a “town within a town” — Spasova Sloboda. It was founded in the first half of the 18th century by people fleeing persecution for the “old faith”.
After Patriarch Nikon's church reform, those who refused the new rites — the Old Believers — were hounded and persecuted throughout Russia. Entire families left for the forests and the outskirts, closer to the borders, where the authorities had less reach. The marshy banks of a large river near Gomel became one such refuge. Here, away from the main roads, an Old Believer settlement grew, with its own churches, way of life and crafts. Gomel's Old Believer merchants controlled trade, while their wives and daughters made wax candles to sell.
The settlement has long since merged into the larger city, but its traces can still be read in old churches, winding streets and names. We will follow them: from a red-brick Old Believer church to the oldest surviving Old Believer church in Belarus, a wooden building from the 18th century, and finish on a high riverbank from which the whole story unfolds before you.
What to do: 1) Read the story and task at each stop. 2) Find the place on the map and walk up to it. 3) Look around and answer the question.
The route is short and on foot. We begin on Proletarskaya Street, formerly Feldmarshalskaya Street, the heart of the old settlement. Let's go!
The route points in order — what these places are and why they are interesting. Tasks and answers stay inside the quest.
We begin at the very edge of old Gomel. This house stands on the lip of a deep ravine, Kagalny Rov.
We continue along Proletarskaya Street, formerly Feldmarshalskaya Street. Wealthy Old Believer merchants built their homes here, and it was here that the community finally decided to build a large masonry church.
From the church we head downhill towards the river. Along the way you pass the blocks where the settlement followed its own way of life and practised its crafts.
One last push towards the water. From the church, walk to the edge of the bank: the right bank here rises twenty metres and drops almost vertically, cut by ravines like Kagalny Rov itself.
This route is part of Metravel city quests. Below are the other quests in this city and cities with quests nearby.