Plyos, the secret Russian vacation spot where you can rub elbows with Putin’s pals

Many towns in Russia’s Golden Ring—a compact network of ancient, fairy-tale villages northeast of Moscow—have connections to the country’s emperors and czars. Ivan the Terrible vacationed in the 11th century town of Yaroslavl; Peter the Great grew up in Pereslavl; the Romanovs were said to have links to the town of Kostroma.

“Everywhere you look here there are stories about power struggles or political intrigue,” a local monk told South China Morning Post in 2015.

But one Golden Ring town has been exempt from a politically charged history … until now.

Plyos, a medieval merchant town on the Volga with just 2,000 permanent residents, has scarcely been in the spotlight since it was settled by Slavs in the 10th century. Its claims to fame have typically ranged from the obscure (talented linen producers! Excellent smoked sea bream!) to the culturally significant—the town was a source of inspiration for the great landscape painter Isaac Levitan.

Fast-forward to 2017, and Plyos is occupying an increasingly large share of national interest. For one thing, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has been regularly vacationing in a sprawling compound just a few miles beyond the town’s main road—complete with a ski slope and chairlift, a man-made lake, multiple helipads, and a 20-foot-tall fence to conceal it all. (Officially, it’s a guarded, government-owned residence.)

And Medvedev is just one of a growing number of prominent local vacationers. The former Russian ambassador to Washington has a dacha in Plyos, as does a former governor of St. Petersburg and President Vladimir Putin’s national security adviser. (The town is equidistant to Russia’s two largest cities.) No surprise, the country’s richest businessmen are now sweeping up weekend homes. Even Putin himself was rumored to be commissioning a house in the area.

So what’s drawing the Russian elite to this burgeoning Hamptons on the Volga?