Moscow Oblast, Russia — Towns & Travel Guide

What is Moscow Oblast known for?

Its fame is monastic. Sergiyev Posad holds the Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius, the mother house of the Russian Orthodox Church and a place of pilgrimage since the fourteenth century, while Istra guards the domes of the New Jerusalem Monastery to the west. Older still are the fortress towns that once shielded Moscow, among them Kolomna and Zvenigorod.

Forest and dacha country fill the space between them.

Where is Moscow Oblast?

Moscow Oblast fills the heart of the East European Plain, wrapped completely around the city of Moscow, which sits at its centre without belonging to it. The land is gently rolling rather than mountainous. Low wooded hills, the Moscow Uplands, rise across the west and north and reach their high ground near the town of Dmitrov, where the plain lifts to a little over three hundred metres.

The east is different. There the ground sinks into the Meshchera Lowlands, a flat expanse of peat bog, pine and standing water that drains slowly toward the Oka. Water orders the whole region.

Every river here belongs to the basin of the Volga, the great artery of European Russia, and the land tilts south and east to feed it. The Moskva River loops through the capital and on across the oblast to meet the Oka near Kolomna, while the Klyazma drains the north-east. Forest covers much of the ground between the towns.

Spruce and pine hold the wetter tracts, oak and birch the drier rises, and that belt of woodland, threaded with rivers and dotted with dachas, is the classic face of Podmoskovye.

What is Moscow Oblast like?

Podmoskovye is where Moscow goes to breathe. For generations the wooded country around the capital has been dacha land, a place of summer cottages, kitchen gardens and pine air, and that habit still shapes how the region feels on a warm weekend. The other current is older and deeper.

This is a heartland of Russian Orthodoxy, and its monasteries are working communities, not museums. The Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius at Sergiyev Posad remains the spiritual centre of the church, drawing pilgrims to the relics of Sergius of Radonezh much as it has for six centuries. Nearby towns carry the same weight of memory.

Kolomna keeps a stone kremlin and a quarter of old churches above the Oka, and Zvenigorod its white cathedral among the hills. Craft belongs to the picture too, from the lacquered miniatures and painted toys long made around Sergiyev Posad. The common language is Russian, the same as in the capital it encircles.

Town and forest sit close together here.

What is the history of Moscow Oblast?

The towns came first. Volokolamsk, Zvenigorod and Dmitrov were founded in the twelfth century, in the same generation as Moscow itself, as the princes of Moscow ringed their capital with fortress towns against attack from every side. Kolomna guarded the Oka approach; Zvenigorod the road from the west.

As Moscow rose to command all of Russia, that defensive ring became its hinterland. The province itself came far later. The oblast as an administrative unit was drawn up only in 1929, long after the towns it gathers had made their history.

What is the climate of Moscow Oblast?

Moscow Oblast has a humid continental climate. Winter rules it. Snow lies deep from late November until the thaw at the end of March, and January days sit well below freezing across the forests and river valleys.

Summers are short but genuinely warm, the season when Podmoskovye fills with dacha weekends and the birch woods turn heavy and green. Rain falls through the year rather than in one wet season. Spring and autumn are brief hinges between the extremes.

How do you get to Moscow Oblast?

You reach Podmoskovye through Moscow. The two main airports serving the capital, Sheremetyevo to the north-west and Domodedovo to the south, both stand on Moscow Oblast soil rather than inside the city itself. From the capital, suburban elektrichka trains fan out along every radius to the region's towns.

The line north-east runs to Sergiyev Posad and its monastery; another carries south-east to Kolomna on the Oka. Roads follow the same spokes out from Moscow.