Somino – Church and Apostles’ Festival

• The Church of Saints Peter and Paul was built in the 1840s and dedicated to the two apostles.
• The Feast of Saints Peter and Paul is considered the village’s most important festival. The tradition was revived in 1993.
• The festival includes a large procession through the village and folk festivities.

Both cultural points of interest are associated with Peter and Paul: Somino’s church is dedicated to the saints, and the village festival is named after the apostles. In this way, the building’s history and the festival tradition sit side by side without telling the same story about Somino. The church’s construction in the 1840s provides a historical point of reference; the festival is traditionally described in terms of its procession and folk festivities.

The festival tradition was revived in 1993 at the initiative of Somino’s parish priest, Archpriest Gennady Belovolov. Since then, the festival has been celebrated as the village’s most important. If you want to plan your trip around it, check the dates and program for the relevant year. The historical reference to 1993 does not confirm a date for any particular travel year.

The shared dedication to Peter and Paul also helps distinguish the two subjects: the church represents a specific 19th-century building, while the festival represents a revived local tradition. This gives you two different cultural perspectives on Somino without conflating the church’s construction period with the year the festival was revived.

In the wider travel destination of Boksitogorskiy District, the “Astracha, 1941” Museum tells the story of events near Tikhvin in November and December 1941. At its heart are the true stories of a Russian boy and a German boy. This gives the exhibition a different historical focus from Somino’s church history: here, the subject is wartime events and individual life stories.

The interactive exhibition continuously displays a wartime chronicle across four screens. Visitors can also interact with authentic objects from the wartime period. The chronicle and personal stories offer two different ways into the subject: a chronological overview and individual human perspectives. The museum is part of the wider travel destination of Boksitogorskiy District, so its themes provide regional context for Somino.

Another distinctive landscape feature of Boksitogorskiy District is its exhausted quarries, which have filled with water to form artificial lakes. Fish species found in the district’s quarries include trout, muksun, European perch, roach, bream and catfish. Alongside churches and wartime history, the region therefore offers its quarry-shaped landscape and fish species as subjects in their own right.

Discover more destinations: Voznesenye, Domozhirovo, Trubnikov Bor, Ladozhskoye Ozero, Chernavino, Nurma, Zaporozhskoye and Garbolovo.

What is included in Somino’s Apostles’ Festival?

The Feast of Saints Peter and Paul includes a large procession through the village and folk festivities. It is considered the village’s most important festival; the tradition was revived in 1993.

When was the Church of Saints Peter and Paul built?

The church in Somino was built in the 1840s and dedicated to Saints Peter and Paul the Apostles.

Whose stories are at the heart of the “Astracha, 1941” Museum?

The museum in the wider travel destination of Boksitogorskiy District tells the story of events near Tikhvin in November and December 1941. At its heart are the true stories of a Russian boy and a German boy.

For the wider travel overview: Leningrad Oblast.