Tarkovsky's Andrei Rublev follows a medieval icon painter through the Russia of 1400–1424, and its key scenes were shot around Vladimir and Suzdal, from the Church of the Intercession on the Nerl to the Dormition Cathedral.
The route also visits the Izborsk Fortress, where the Vladimir raid was filmed, plus the Andronikov Monastery in Moscow, where the story starts and ends, and the Trinity Lavra, home of Rublev's most famous icon, which the film shows in its colour epilogue. Some stops are filming spots rather than named story places.
Alexander Nevsky's career runs from Pereslavl-Zalessky and Novgorod to the Neva at Ust-Izhora, Pskov, frozen Lake Peipus and, at the end, Gorodets and Vladimir, where he was buried in 1263.
The route follows the prince from his birth in 1221 to his death on the way home from the Golden Horde. Several battle sites are only believed locations, and the accounts of the Neva and the Ice come mostly from Russian chronicles.
The legend of Kitezh, the Russian Atlantis, says the city sank into Lake Svetloyar rather than fall to the Mongols. The route also visits Gorodets on the Volga, said to be Little Kitezh, and Kideksha near Suzdal, the name's folk origin. On calm days, they say, its bells can still be heard.
The route follows the story from the folk etymology of the name, through the town said to be Little Kitezh and the forests of the Kerzhenets, to the lake itself and the St Petersburg stage where the opera first sounded. Kitezh is a legend: the places are traditional identifications, not proof.
