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MuromMurom (Муром) is a historic city in Vladimir Oblast, Russia, which sprawls majestically along the left bank of Oka River, about 300 km east of Moscow. Population is 145,500 (2002). In the 9th century, the city marked the easternmost settlement of the Eastern Slavs in the land of Finno-Ugric people called muroma. The Russian Primary Chronicle mentions it as early as 862. It is thus one of the oldest cities in Russia. From the 10th to the 14th centuries, it was a capital of a separate principality, whose rulers included Saint Gleb, assasinated in 1015 and canonized in 1071, Saint Prince Konstantin the Blessed, and Saints Peter and Theuronia, subjects of an opera by Rimsky-Korsakov. It was a home town of the most celebrated East Slavic epic hero, Ilya Muromets. Despite ravages of the Bolshevik rule, Murom still retains many marks of antiquity. The Saviour monastery, one of the most ancient in Russia, was first chronicled in 1096, when Oleg of Chernigov besieged it and killed Vladimir Monomakh's son Izyaslav, who is buried there. In 1552, the monastery was visited by Ivan the Terrible who commissioned a stone cathedral, which was followed by other churches. The Trinity convent, where the relics of Sts Peter and Theuronia are displayed, features a fine cathedral (1642-43), Kazan church (1652), a bell-tower (1652), a wooden church of St Sergius, and stone walls. It is rivalled by the Annunciation cloister, founded in the reign of Ivan the Terrible to house the relics of local princes and containing a cathedral from 1664. Two last-mentioned cathedrals, being probably the works of the same masters, have much in common with the Resurrection church (1658) in the downtown. Quite different is the tent-like church of Kozma and Damian, built in 1565 on the bank of the Oka to commemorate the Russian conquest of Kazan. Among famous natives, we should mention the father of colour photography, Sergey Prokudin-Gorskiy (1863), and the father of television, Vladimir Zworykin (1889).
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