[2] Since many scholars believe that early Eastern Slavs tribes arrived in modern-day Belarus, Ukraine and western Russia AD 400 to 600, Kostroma could be much older than previously thought.

It then constituted a small principality, under leadership of Prince Vasily of Kostroma, a younger brother of the famous Alexander Nevsky.

The spectacular growth[quantify] of the city in the 16th century may be attributed to the establishment of trade connections with English and Dutch merchants (Muscovy Company) through the northern port of Archangel.

[citation needed] The heroic peasant Ivan Susanin became a symbol of the city's resistance to foreign invaders;[dubious – discuss] several monuments to him may be seen in Kostroma.

say that Catherine the Great dropped her fan on the city map, and told the architects to follow her design.

One of the best preserved examples of the 18th century town planning, Kostroma retains some elegant structures in a "provincial neoclassical" style.

These include a governor's palace, a fire tower, a rotunda on the Volga embankment, and an arcaded central market with a merchant church in the center.

Organised around the principle of a "public hearth" (obshchestvennyi ochag) this club combined both practical support for workers in need of accommodation, food or furniture, as well as providing a focus for popular education.

Built in 1559–1565, the five-domed Epiphany Cathedral was the first stone edifice in the city; its medieval frescoes perished during a fire several years ago.

The minster houses the city's most precious relic, a 10th-century Byzantine icon called Our Lady of St. Theodore.