Dormition Cathedral, Vladimir

This twelfth-century cathedral crowning a bluff above the Klyazma River in Vladimir was once the principal church of medieval Rus and a model for later Russian cathedral architecture, including those of the Moscow Kremlin. Built of white limestone and later expanded, it preserves surviving frescoes by the great painters Andrei Rublev and Daniil Chorny. Its gilded domes rise above the old city, commanding wide views over the river plain. It ranks among the most significant surviving churches of early Russian civilisation.