Place · Rus principality capital · Russia
Tver
Also known as Tver’
Tver on the upper Volga was the capital of the Grand Duchy of Tver, Moscow's great rival among the medieval Rus principalities, before its final absorption into Muscovy in 1485. In the 1470s it was a prosperous river-port on the Volga trade route between the Baltic, the Caspian and Central Asia, and it is from this merchant milieu that Afanasy Nikitin set out in 1468 on the Volga for a Shirvan trade mission that — after pirates took his goods at the Volga mouth — turned into the six-year journey to the Bahmani Deccan and the first substantial Russian first-hand account of India, Khozhdeniye za Tri Morya (The Journey Beyond the Three Seas). The statue of Nikitin on the Volga embankment at Tver (1955) is the city's best-known monument.
- Function
- Authority & administration
- Patron dynasty
- Grand Duchy of Tver
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 56.859, 35.918
Connections (1)
- BirthplaceAfanasy Nikitin
Afanasy Nikitin was born into the Tver merchant community in the first third of the 15th century and set out from Tver down the Volga in 1468 on what began as a Shirvan trade mission and became the first substantial Russian first-hand account of India. He never saw Tver again — he died at Smolensk on the way home in 1475 — and his notebook was carried the last stretch back to Moscow by Vasily Mamyrev.
On these journeys
Sources
Standard reference.
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