Travel Guide Ougoditchi (Угодичи)

By returning to Poretchïé, you can reach the village of Ougoditchi by a very bad road. Founded in very remote times, his name, as is often the case, is linked to two legends that vie for ingenuity to explain its origin. According to the first, the village, called Ougoji until the th century, would have changed its name due to the daughter of a prince of Rostov, a certain Boudislava Ougoda (a typical Slavic first Name and a family name that comes from the adjective «ougodlivaïa», which means obséquieuse, hastily and corresponded very well to the character of the girl). According to the second legend, the inhabitants of the village answered the first at the request of the Prince of Kiev, Vladimir, who wanted to be baptized on the shores of the Nero Lake, and did not reject him (the verb «ougodit»). In the village, the Wooden Church Saint-Kirik and Sainte-Oulita testified to this event, which is considered the baptism of Russia. The princes of Rostov were often hunting in the vicinity of Ougoditchi, and Vladimir Monomaque's son, Mstislav, built a palace of oak wood («the house of the Monomaque») and a wooden church. In 1553 Ivan the Terrible stayed in Ougoditchi, a land he held in his mother's inheritance, Elena Glinskaïa. This old rival of Poretchïé finally won the possession of Nero Lake, and all coastal villages have been paying to Ougoditchi the right to fish in the lake. The main activities of the inhabitants have always been fishing and gardening. From the th century, it began (under the influence of Poretchïé) to cultivate medicinal plants, to extract salt and, in winter, to supply the neighbouring villages with ice supplies. Today, on the market square, a number of well-preserved merchant houses can be seen as well as houses entirely in stone from the end of the th century. Nicolskaïa Street, about a mile and a half, travels across the village and runs along the shores of the lake. Half way, the Saint Nicholas church was built with five domes shaped between 1707 and 1709 in the square of the wooden church there. Later, its high circular clocher at three levels dates from the beginning of the th century.