‘North’ in Russia is a broad concept. For the purposes of this article, the term will refer to the Vologda region, an area north-east of Moscow with a cultural and historical coherence created by geography and its strategic position as Muscovy’s gateway to the north and east. Inhabited by Finnic tribes before the arrival of the first Slavic explorers and traders, it served as a retreat and place of spiritual solace for the avatars of Muscovite monasticism during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. At the same time the wealth of the region’s forests and lakes, as well as its position astride trading routes north to the White Sea, west to the Baltic and east to Siberia, led to the creation of towns that supported developments in the arts and architecture.