A while ago, in the 12th century, there was a village Vitoslavlitsy by the road between Novgorod and St. George Monastery. Nearby were the fields and lands belonging to St. Panteleymon, Arkazhsky, Annunciation and many other smaller monasteries. Today the village and most of these monasteries are gone, but the landscape, including lakes and canals, remained. In the 1960s it was considered attractive enough to found here an open-air museum of wooden architecture.