Maslenitsa guide
the most beloved folk festival in Russia

The Pancake Week has always been greatly celebrated in Russia with horse riding, sleighing, games, and tasty treats. We offer a special program for our guests on the Island of Kizhi for this week. In addition to the excursion around the main exposition, you will take part in games and fun activities together with the folklore theater of the Kizhi museum.

The fun program includes sleighing, traditional Zaonezhie festive songs and dances, tug of war and more. Tea-drinking with traditional Russian pancakes will support your festive mood.

The program duration including transfer is 6 hours.This program is available from the 4 to 10th of March.

Tickets are available at the museum website kizhi.karelia.ru

The Pancake Week has always been greatly celebrated in Russia with horse riding, sleighing, games, and tasty treats. We offer a special program for our guests on the Island of Kizhi for this week. In addition to the excursion around the main exposition, you will take part in games and fun activities together with the folklore theater of the Kizhi museum.

The fun program includes sleighing, traditional Zaonezhie festive songs and dances, tug of war and more. Tea-drinking with traditional Russian pancakes will support your festive mood.

The program duration including transfer is 6 hours.This program is available from the 4 to 10th of March.

Tickets are available at the museum website kizhi.karelia.ru

The two-day festival program will include concerts and competitions, with tasting of pancakes. The artifacts of the celebration will include the Dummy of Winter and a tall pole for daring and brave who will try to get their gifts perched on the pole 8.5 m high. Pillow fights, log-sawing contest, Roosters game, jumping in sacks, weight lifting, walking on stilts and many other holiday festivities will finish with the traditional burning of the Dummy of Winter.

The Emerald Valley, a family park of Russian history, will offer round dance parties and competitions of strongmen. The Crafts Fair will include lessons in making ancient Russian charms, and gingerbread painting, and offer pancakes with herb tea. On March 10, the Emerald Valley Park will host the traditional burning of the straw Dummy of Winter and cold fireworks.

Yalutorovsk has been proud of its Pancake Capital of Russia title; the celebration of Butter Week has a history of almost 350 years.

Pancake Battle is a grandiose show at Siberian Butter Week in Yalutorovsk. For 12 years in a row the largest pancake in Russia – 3 meters in diameter – is baked in Yalutorovsk. Those who try it will be guaranteed a very happy new year.

The entire variety of Butter Week treats is offered in “super-size” at Made in Yalutorovsk Gigantic Food Tasting Festival, where guests will try a 200 kg cake, a bologna 6 m 23 cm long, a huge semolina cake and a fish pie, a 10 kg meat dumpling and a 100 kg Herring under Fur Coat salad.

Yaroslavl is the capital of Pancake Week in Russia. During the festivities the city gets transformed and becomes the scene of Butter Week open air parties, where anyone can find something to do and enjoy themselves, not forgetting the pancakes of all kinds served with such delicacies as onion jam, farmer cheese and quail liver.

Come to the festival to make our own carnival mask, take part in the Russian winter carnival, watch strongmen compete and play, and show off your own prowess and strength if you so desire. The guests can visit the pancake shooting range, and athletes looking for new impressions will learn what the pancake frisbee and curling are, and will even get to play football in felt boots. The exhibition of life-size Butter Week dolls will tell the story of their creation, and herbal tea from the largest samovar in Russia will keep you warm even in bitter cold. Visitors can also purchase favorite Yaroslavl souvenirs – majolica, enamel miniatures, felt boots, Yaroslavl chocolate and many other things – to take home with them.

It is at this time that Yaroslavl becomes also a creative space for young artists who present their unique art objects and installations, which make the Yaroslavl Butter Week unforgettable.

Bazhov’s Butter Week theme is one of the most important themes on the Middle Urals.

On March 2019 in the Park of Tales in Aramil, the first such theme park in the Urals, the main winter magician, Ural Moroz (Urals Frost) will ceremoniously turn his duties over to Vesna Krasna (Spring the Beautiful). One of the holiday programs of the Park of Fairy Tales is Bazhov’s Butter Week, which will be attended by fairy tale characters, will include fortune-telling by the Mistress of the Copper Mountain, and tea drinking at the tasting ceremony of ancient Urals cuisine recipes.

Bazhov’s birthplace, Sysert, also holds bright Butter Week festivities that can come together with the tour of Bazhov places. Here you can visit the writer’s House and Museum and the unique Sysert Porcelain enterprise. The Butter Week will be held here on March 10, with 250 kg of pancakes baked in accordance with traditional Urals recipes, and dog sled rides.

On March 4-10, 2019 yet another Bazhov-themed city of Polevskoy will include celebrations of the traditional Butter Week and give an opportunity to see the legendary places of the area. Village of Podnevnoe, Polevskoy City District, is described in two of Bazhov’s tales, “The Silver Hoof,” and “Jumping Fire.” Tourist routes based on fairy tales, including the Minerals Route and the Gastronomy Route, pass through here as well.

One of the brightest and most anticipated festivals has always been celebrated widely and with much joy. Samara is no exception: every year more than 80,000 people come to celebrate to Kuybysheva square. The Butter Week festivities are accompanied by a concert program. The guests are traditionally not only spectators here, they can take part in interactive shows, competitions and games, dance and sing, take photos, take part in traditional Butter Week games, such as pillow fights on wooden logs and tug-of-war competitions, and climb the Butter Week Pole to claim their prizes. You can also visit the City of Craftsmen, where it is possible not only  buy hand-made souvenirs, but also attend workshops and learn about making spring souvenirs with your own hands.

For several years already Voronezh Central Park, planted in 1844 by order of Emperor Alexander II, has been hosting Butter Week festivities. Residents and guests of the city meet here to awaken the nature to new life with their laughter, pancake parties and games.

Voronezh will welcome the Butter Week on March 4-10 this year, and on Saturday, March 9, the main celebration will take place where we will once again say good-bye to the winter season and welcome in the spring, the warmth and the sunshine! Concert programs, master classes in baking pancakes, tasting pancakes are waiting for the guests. Meanwhile master classes in ice skating will help to whet your appetite. The main event of the holiday is the burning of the Dummy of Winter.

For several years already Voronezh Central Park, planted in 1844 by order of Emperor Alexander II, has been hosting Butter Week festivities. Residents and guests of the city meet here to awaken the nature to new life with their laughter, pancake parties and games.

Voronezh will welcome the Butter Week on March 4-10 this year, and on Saturday, March 9, the main celebration will take place where we will once again say good-bye to the winter season and welcome in the spring, the warmth and the sunshine! Concert programs, master classes in baking pancakes, tasting pancakes are waiting for the guests. Meanwhile master classes in ice skating will help to whet your appetite. The main event of the holiday is the burning of the Dummy of Winter.

The Butter Week in Leningrad Region gives you an opportunity to visit the ancient Russian festival, as if travel in time to celebrate the Butter Week festivities at the time of Ancient Rus.

Colorful celebrations of the Butter Week will take place in the Village of Mandrogi. This village recreated in the Ancient Rus historic style is located in the middle of coniferous forests is the ideal setting for the celebration of the Butter Week. Here you will attend a real fair with skomorokh performances and fun competitions of Russian bogatyrs, you will sled downhill, or ride a troika with bells, or climb the Butter Week pole to claim a prize. The main ritual of this holiday that symbolizes the end of winter and the coming of the spring is the burning of the Butter Week Dummy.

We also recommend visiting Pancake festivities in Gatchina and Vyborg.

Since the very first days of existence of St. Petersburg, Butter Week Festivities there were always grandiose and included many forms of popular entertainment, including sledding and amateur theater presentations.

The Maslenitsa festival is celebrated annually on a large scale on Elagin Island. Festive celebrations are such a fairy performance that visitors coming here feel like they have travelled to the days of old Russia. In addition to traditional dances, performances, fairs, tea and pancakes, all the visitors can enjoy the fascinating performances of special guests that will not leave anyone indifferent.

Museums also have prepared their exhibition and lecture events, and folklore ensembles will be performing in concert halls and at open venues. Restaurants will not miss a chance to let their guests enjoy themselves this holiday season with great variety of different pancakes as well.