Medievalism, defined as the use of medieval history to describe and interpret the present, has been seen in Western Europe primarily as a phenomenon of culture, intellectual history and commerce. However, in Eastern Europe and Russia things have been the other way round, for there, right from the start the appeal to medieval history was an important element of ethnic nationalism, and of official historical policy and memory in various systems. The phenomenon of Medievalism will be studied in this paper using the example of the history of the ancient Russian city of Pskov, which has an eventful and glorious past. The paper shows that rather than being comprehended, Pskov's early history was rather constructed, in compliance with the ideological and cultural discourses of later times. Many legends about the city came into existence over the 16th-19th centuries, but were then turned into 'real facts' in historical literature and became incarnated in places of memory (lieux de mémoire). Such places, manifesting t