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Smolensk
City in Smolensk Oblast, Russia

Smolensk

Smolensk is a city and the administrative center of Smolensk Oblast, Russia, located on the Dnieper River, 360 kilometers (220 mi) west-southwest of Moscow.

Plan a trip to Smolensk→From Minsk

Population: 316,570 (2021 census).

Get in

Getting to Smolensk

Although there are two airports, they are used by military only and civil planes are not accepted. There are discussions to revert them to civil airports, but the projects are still on hold. From Moscow several trains from Belorusskiy train station reach Smolensk in 5-6 hours. Some of them reach into Europe as far as to Paris and Nice (in summer only). The same trains can be used to reach Smolensk from Belarus.

  1. 01
    Smolensk

    Several times a week there are buses connecting Smolensk with European towns, such as Berlin, Warsaw, Madrid, Riga and some others, the timetable is subject to change, though.

See

Worth seeing

  1. 01
    Smolensk Kremlin

    Partially preserved fortress wall was built between 1595 and 1602.

  2. 02
    Dormition Cathedral in Smolensk

    300-year-old cathedral in the baroque style.

  3. 03
    Katyń

    Several kilometers west of Smolensk lies the Katyn (Russian: Катынь; Polish: Katyń) forest.

Eat

Where to eat

  1. 01
    Russkiy Dvor

    Fancy decorated restaurant with Russian/Soviet cuisine and grill bar.

How locals move

Getting around Smolensk the local way

  • Get inBoth are good for hitchhiking as well, though note, that M1 is about 6km from the town.
  • Get aroundPublic transportation is cheap, unreliable and slow, mostly based on marshrutka buses often in bad condition (damaged doors and windows, visible rust).

From Wikivoyage: Smolensk, CC BY-SA. Not yet checked by us. That article was last edited 2025-03, so a service it names may have changed or stopped.

Text adapted from Wikipedia and Wikivoyage, CC BY-SA 4.0. Photograph: Wikimedia Commons (see file page), Wikimedia Commons.