[18] The Russian Cultinfo website wrote that there were 224 monuments of historical, artistic and cultural importance in Vologda.

Until that year, no stone constructions existed in Vologda; all of the city fortifications, bridges, houses, churches, and industrial enterprises were made of wood.

The civil war continued, and in 1450, Vologda was besieged by the troops of Dmitry Shemyaka; however, they did not manage to occupy the town.

During the reign of Tsar Ivan the Terrible, Vologda became one of the major transit centers of Russia's trade.

The trade with Siberia was conducted via the Sukhona and the Vychegda, and Vologda also played an important role as a transit center.

In 1553, Vologda was visited by the English seafarer Richard Chancellor who officially established diplomatic relations between the Tsardom of Russia and England.

That year, he visited the city for the first time and decided to make it the center of Oprichnina and consequently the capital of the country.

However, in 1571 Ivan the Terrible unexpectedly stopped the construction work in Vologda and left the city for good.

According to the legend, when Ivan visited the Saint Sophia Cathedral, a little stone fell from the roof on his head.

The superstitious Tsar who received a serious head injury took it as a sign of misfortune and decided to leave the city.

Moreover, in February 1609 a national home guard headed by Nikita Vysheslavtsev was formed in Vologda and went to fight against False Dmitry II.

In 1612, people of Vologda rendered sizable food and military help to the home guard organized by Kuzma Minin and Dmitry Pozharsky, which eventually defeated Polish troops.

After 1613, Vologda quickly recovered due to its convenient location and once again became an important center of foreign trade.

Peter the Great visited Vologda on no less than ten occasions, on six of which (in 1692, 1693, 1694, 1702, 1722, and 1724) he stayed in the city for extended time.

In 1796, the viceroyalty, administered by a governor-general, was transformed into Vologda Governorate, the borders of which stretched up to the Ural mountains in the east.

In 1871, the Danish merchant Friedrich Buman opened a specialized butter factory in the manor of Fominskoye, 13 kilometers (8.1 mi) from Vologda.

In the 19th–20th centuries, such persons as Joseph Stalin, Vyacheslav Molotov (later the Minister of Foreign Affairs), Nikolai Berdyaev (the famous Russian philosopher), Boris Savinkov (later known as a successful terrorist), Mariya Ulyanova, and Alexander Bogdanov were sent to Vologda.

Soviet power was established in Vologda in December 1917, and up to the summer of 1918 co-existed with the zemstvo and municipal administration.

Embassies located in Saint Petersburg were threatened by the German army, so Western powers, led by American Ambassador David R. Francis, relocated them to Vologda.

During World War II, martial law was declared in Vologda, and its industrial enterprises shifted to military production.

To commemorate these events, a monument to the air defense forces was later erected on Zosimovskaya Street in Vologda.

Even though the deputies introduced more than four hundred amendments and the document increased more than twice in volume as compared with the Charter of 1996, the changes were relatively minor.

A considerable part of the city population are government officials and civil servants of different levels – according to various estimates, their number reaches fifty thousand people.

[9] Vologda is one of the best preserved big cities of Russia combining traditional wooden architecture and stone monuments.

The best known of them were Konstantin Batyushkov, Varlam Shalamov, Nikolay Rubtsov, and Vasily Belov and Vladimir Gilarovsky.

Contemporary literature of Vologda is represented by a number of authors which include Nata Suchkova, Maria Markova, Galina Schekina, and Anton Chorny.

The stretch between Vologda-2 and Losta is the most active one in the railroad network of the Russian Federation, with more than 120–150 pairs of trains running through it daily.

Yak-40 aircraft carry out regular passenger flights to Moscow, Ukhta, Velikiy Ustyug, Kichmengsky Gorodok, and Vytegra.

The municipal transportation of Vologda is carried out by bus and trolleybus routes, and also by lines of fixed-route taxis.

The main transport companies are the open society "VologdaElectroTrans" (trolleybuses), PATP-1 and PATP-32 (municipal bus routes).