Novgorod and Pskov

Novgorod is the great medieval trading town of the east. Furs, wax and silver come here – and so do the merchants from Gotland and the Hanseatic League.

In 1045 work begins on the Cathedral of Saint Sophia. It is finished around 1050, with five domes and thick, almost closed walls. The model is Saint Sophia in Kyiv, but Novgorod's version is sterner. More Romanesque than Greek, many say.

In the cathedral hangs a bronze door known in Sweden as the Sigtuna Door. Legend says it was taken as booty when Sigtuna was sacked in 1187. True? Hardly. Scholars believe the door was cast in Magdeburg in the 1150s, probably for a cathedral in Poland. But the legend lives on.

In the 14th century Novgorod's churches become smaller and more their own: a cube, one dome, trefoil gables. In 1374 the Church of the Transfiguration on Ilyina Street is finished, and four years later Theophanes the Greek paints its walls.

Pskov is the younger sister who becomes the master. Here they build in local limestone, plastered and whitewashed. The churches get side chapels, porches and open bell walls – zvonnitsa – where the bells hang in a row in arched openings. The style peaks in the 15th and 16th centuries, and Pskov's builders are called to Moscow and Kazan. Their names are mostly unknown – the patrons are princes, archbishops and the town's merchants.

And the link to Gotland? In Garde and Källunge there are paintings in a Russo-Byzantine style from the 12th century. The same world, on the other side of the Baltic.

Romanesque. The thick walls and small windows recall Romanesque churches in Sweden. But the dome on its drum, the white lime and the bell wall are Russian.