Fodor's Expert Review Kizhi State Open-Air Museum of History, Architecture and Ethnography

On an island in Lake Onega, the Kizhi State Museum is an open-air collection of 83 traditional wooden structures, many of which were transferred to the island in the 1950s from around the region. The highlight of the island is the Kizhi Pogost (settlement), a UNESCO World Heritage site containing two 18th-century wooden churches and a 20-meter-high wooden bell tower with a shingled onion-domed tent roof that dates to the late 1800s. The Church of the Transfiguration is the pogost's crown jewel. The top of its highest cupola stands at 37 meters in height, and the entire multistory structure was erected without a single nail. The slightly smaller Church of the Intercession is topped with eight onion-dome cupolas atop its central octagonal dome and features an interior wall covered from floor to ceiling with Russian Orthodox icons.