This is where he stood and this is where he took off his jacket - he took it off, just like that!

Museum director Leonid Panov

Leonid Panov, director of the Staryy Izborsk State Museum-Estate, told the paper that a memorial route entitled "A Walking Tour of the Places that President V.V. Putin Visited in Izborsk" has been mapped out.

Memorial plaques are to be hung near a waterfall that caught the president's eye and "on the square where he ate a lightly salted gherkin".

"This is where he stood and this is where he took off his jacket - he took it off, just like that! And he took a drink of water," Panov told the paper.

Putin goes native on an earlier visit to Tatarstan

"We in the Pskov region have a book entitled 'The Legendary Truvor's Path.' Now we want to compile a book called 'Putin's Path'," Panov added.

Truvor is said to be a Scandinavian prince who came to ancient Rus and ruled in Izborsk from 862, although not for long: he died after being bitten by a poisonous snake.

Panov said the Putin memorial site has begun to capture the imagination - at least of top Russian officials, who he said have been making tracks to the town in increasing numbers.

Internal Affairs Minister Rushaylo visited Izborsk in late August for talks with his Estonian counterpart Tarmo Loodus.

"I prepared a performance by Russian and Setu folk choirs for them," Panov said. "But Rushaylo immediately said no, let us start with the places that Putin visited."

Lenin trail

Segodnya asked the sales girl at the souvenir kiosk whether people in Izborsk were not afraid that the presidential route would not turn into some kind of "Lenin trail".

"What is wrong with that? We were brought up on the ideas of Lenin, now it is the ideas of Putin. What of it?" she replied.

Churchill and Stalin also got the waxwork treatment

Others were not so sure. Russian satirist Arkadiy Arkanov told Ekho Moskvy radio that President Putin had not commented on the moves to provide him with memorial while he is still alive.

"Sometimes a person actively develops his cult, sometimes it is done by the people around him," Arkanov said.

"There are persons who start getting annoyed by such behaviour of their subordinates and they instruct them to stop it. Others ignore it and thus silently allow the retinue to continue."

"As no comments on the issue have been made by the person himself, why can't we think that he just likes it", Arkanov said.

BBC Monitoring, based in Caversham in southern England, selects and translates information from radio, television, press, news agencies and the Internet from 150 countries in more than 70 languages.