The main street, with its belching buses and long blocks of Stalin-era housing, is not the best way to see the city. We discovered running exactly parallel Herzen Street, which is a classic small provincial town street, lined with often brightly colored wood houses, and with stray dogs running around with impunity. Below is a building at the corner of Herzen and Chekhov streets. 
Above is the city of Vladimir’s department of handicapped and invalid services (where they put the elevator is a good question…). You can’t really see its other plaque, but it was also the home of N.N. Zlatovratsky, a realist Russian writer of the late 19th century who specialized, apparently, in presenting the lives and troubles of peasants. On our trip, I’d brought along a copy of Chekhov’s letters, and the day we saw this house I happened to read the letter in which Chekhov briefly mentions that he doesn’t like his work. This was apparently a happening part of the city in the 1890s – across the street lived one Fedoseyev, who is credited on a plaque as being the first Marxist revolutionary in the district, and who Lenin came to visit in 1893.
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This strange thing on Lower Moskovskaya Ultisa is a monument to the victims of the Chernobyl Disaster.
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At the western end of downtown is the Golden Gate, one of the original seven gates in the medieval city’s walls (you can see what is left of the walls in that green hillock to the right). Mila found it a good place to make her own temporary impression on the sidewalks of Vladimir.
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The downtown is located on a long, steep hill over the Klyazma River. Considering the flat expanse of Russia, it creates some dramatic views. You can almost imagine seeing the Mongols riding up.
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