The town's only specimens of seventeenth-century architecture are those in the Monastery of the Archangel Michael. It does not bear comparison with Suzdal which abounds in buildings dating back to this period. How­ever Yuryev-Polskoi does possess one building which is just as impressive, if not more so, than anything we have seen in Suzdal. This is the Cathedral of St. George.

Turning right by the new brick cathedral built in 1907-1909 we are suddenly confronted by a strange, splendid building that simply takes your breath away. Its huge onion-shaped dome and broad heavy drum seem to have compressed the squat cube of the cathedral with its bulky apses and forced it to spread outwards. After Vladimir's dazzling white twelfth-cen­tury buildings, the weird greyish green and silvery yel­low tinge of the walls is particularly striking, as though the centuries had deposited their austere patina on the cathedral. The chaotic jumble of carving contrasts vi­vidly with the regular lines of sculpture on the Cathe­dral of St. Dmitri. Strange animals and monsters, saints and angels, lions' heads with fantastic stone garlands in their jaws, and fragments of highly delicate patterns form a huge, enigmatic mosaic. It seems like a giant puzzle in stone.