Lyubytino

Lyubytino District is remarkable for the exceptionally high concentration of archaeological monuments within a relatively small area. Lyubytino is included in the list of historic towns of Russia and was formerly known as the village of Beloye. The settlement stands on the right bank of the Msta, where the centre of the historic district known as Pomostye once lay. Tradition links Pomostye with administrative tribute-collection points established on the Msta by Princess Olga in 947. The Belaya and Zabititsa rivers, right tributaries of the Msta, also flow through the settlement. It is first mentioned as Prokopyevsky churchyard on the Belaya River in the Bezhetskaya Pyatina census books of Novgorod Land in 1581-1583. The village of Bor on the left bank of the Msta appears earlier as Belsky churchyard, around 1495. At the turn of the XIX-XX centuries, Beloye consisted of a single street with 30 households and a population of 150. Timber, flour, livestock and pottery were traded along the Msta. In 1911, a monument to Alexander II was erected in Lyubytino. Alexander II is remembered as the “Tsar Liberator” because serfdom was abolished during his reign. The monument was lost after the 1917 Revolution and recreated by local residents in 2014. In the centre of Lyubytino near the bridge over the Msta stand large Slavic burial mounds 8-10 metres high. More than 200 similar mounds of different heights are known in the surrounding area. Since 2009, Lyubytino has developed as a tourist centre of the Novgorod Region following the opening of the open-air museum “10th-Century Slavic Village”.