Discover Valdaysky District

Valdaysky District can be explored through two distinct points of reference: Iversky Monastery on an island in Lake Valdai and Valdaysky National Park, which extends across the district. The monastery has a clearly defined island location; the park encompasses a much larger landscape. When planning your trip, this distinction helps you consider a specific cultural site and nature experiences in the wider region separately.

National Park and Island Monastery

Valdaysky National Park is a protected area. In Novgorod Oblast, it extends across the districts of Valdaysky, Demyansky and Okulovsky and covers a total of 159,100 hectares. It therefore extends beyond a single district; Valdaysky District is one of the districts covered by the park.

Iversky Monastery is located on an island in Lake Valdai. This makes the lake a specific geographic reference point for visiting the monastery. Together, these provide two different scales for orientation: the island in the lake as a precisely located place, and the national park as a large protected area.

More Nature Experiences in Novgorod Oblast

In the wider destination of Novgorod Oblast, Mount Ryzhokha is the highest point in Valdai National Park. A 25-meter-high observation tower there offers views of the taiga, Lake Velyo and other bodies of water. A different landscape awaits on the circular trail in the Bor area: it leads through typical taiga forests on hilly terrain and through diverse marshes in the hollows between the hills.

The two nature experiences are distinctly different: Ryzhokha combines the park’s highest point with views of the taiga and bodies of water, while the circular trail in the Bor area focuses on forests, hills and marshes. This lets you choose between the region’s landscapes according to your interests, without combining the two places into a single route.

The Great Valdai Trail in the wider destination of Novgorod Oblast offers another kind of nature experience. It is a multi-day hiking route for independent travel. This provides a longer hiking option alongside the specific landscapes seen from the observation tower and on the circular trail in the Bor area. When planning your trip, the key difference is the type of experience: independent hiking over several days, views from a tower, or a circular trail through forest and marshland.

Culture in Valday, Novgorod Oblast

Valday also offers cultural and historical points of interest in the wider travel region of Novgorod Oblast. The Bell Museum Center displays bells from around the world and their forms, from the 3rd century BC through the Middle Ages to modern souvenir bells. Staff demonstrate bell-ringing techniques that visitors can try themselves. The collection and demonstrations thus offer different insights: into the development of bell forms over time and into the techniques of ringing and the sounds they produce.

An exhibition at the Museum of the County Town, which opened in 1998, explores the everyday lives of the town’s residents, the development of local trades, and the lives of individual Valday families and well-known summer visitors. Its themes range from urban life and work to the stories of individual families and guests. The exhibition thus complements the bell collection with a look at life in the town.

Another historic landmark in Valday is the monument “To the Blacksmiths and Bell Makers of Valday,” erected in 2017. Its theme commemorates blacksmiths and bell makers, adding a monument to the city’s local craft history to its cultural offerings.

Discover more destinations: Soletsky District, Starorusskiy rayon, Novgorodskiy rayon, Marevskiy rayon, Borovichsky District, Lyubytinsky District, Malovisherskiy rayon, Demyanskiy rayon.

Go to the overview of the wider destination: Novgorod Oblast.