Staraya Ladoga Art Foundation of Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. The paintings created there were exposed in the first-rate art exhibitions. It completed the collections of the main museums of Soviet Union and numerous private collections of Russia and abroad. Also it became a base of an extensive found of painting, graphics and sculpture of the museum “Staraya Ladoga”. Financing of the House of Creativity stopped at the beginning of the 1990s on the breakup of the USSR and after the liquidation of the Art Foundation. It stopped to receive the artists and was closed. Staraya Ladoga Staraya Ladoga (); ; )
Staraya Ladoga river"), was rendered as "Aldeigja" in Old Norse and later as "Ladoga" in Old East Slavic. "Staraya" is Russian for "Old". According to the Hypatian Codex that was created at the end of the 13th century, the legendary Varangian leader Rurik arrived at Ladoga in 862 and made it his capital. Rurik later moved to Novgorod and his successors then to Kiev where foundations for the powerful state of Kievan Rus' were laid. There are several huge kurgans, or royal funerary barrows, at the outskirts of Ladoga. One of them is said to be Rurik's grave, and another one—that of