Parfino

Parfino District was established on 13 December 1968. Despite its administrative youth, the area has a long history. The ancient route “from the Varangians to the Greeks” followed the Lovat River, and numerous archaeological sites show that people were drawn here by the geography and natural resources. Notable sites include an ancient fortified settlement near Gorodok village on the Mayata River with a cultural layer 40 — 60 cm thick, and a group of burial mounds near Ryabutki consisting of 12 embankments of different sizes. The villages of the district have centuries of history: Nalyuchi, for example, is first mentioned in chronicles in 1200. Settlements on the Pola River were linked to the Seliger route from Novgorod to the Volga and the “lower lands”. The estate of Ekaterina Stroynovskaya-Zurova once stood here. Some Pushkin scholars consider her a possible prototype for the heroine of The Little House in Kolomna and perhaps Tatiana Larina from Eugene Onegin. The Zurov estate was destroyed during the war; only ponds shaped like the monogram “E” remain. Karl Fyodorovich Siemens operated a hay-pressing business in Khmelevo. Remains of a 19th-century manor survive there, including count’s stables and fragments of a “red” road paved with red brick. In 1861, Siemens opened a factory in Gorodok producing electrical insulators. Gorodok is crossed by the remarkably straight Cherenka River, linking the navigable Lovat with old Siemens factory quarries and the former factory site. According to local tradition, it was a man-made canal used by Siemens barges travelling across Lake Ilmen and the Volkhov between Gorodok and St. Petersburg, and when necessary farther to Germany. About one kilometre from Gorodok, the Lovat, Pola and Vergot rivers form a water cross at a key outlet from Lake Ilmen. From the 4th century, according to chronicles, this location lay at the crossing of two major international trade routes — “from the Varangians to the Greeks” and the “Volga Silver Route” — which operated until the 11th century. The district has good conditions for rural, ethnographic, hunting and fishing tourism. It contains 36 archaeological monuments entered in the state register, clean underground water sources, remains of historic estates, and 39 military burial sites along with memorials to Heroes of the Soviet Union.