|
For more than 330 years
Irkutsk has been standing at the south shore of Lake Baikal and for centuries people living in this city were conscious of the uniqueness of its location. The city is divided by the Angara - the only river carrying the precious Baikal waters into the world while more than 300 large, small and tiny mountain rivers flow into the lake.
It is not far from Lake Baikal, down the Angara river, where a Cossack detachment headed by Yakov Pokhabov founded in 1661 a log ostrog (fort), the heart of
the city. It was at this time when Russia began developing vast expanses of Siberia, people came here in search of legendary treasures and by the end of the 17th century there were one thousand people living in Irkutsk: Cossacks, tradesmen, peasants, soldiers, minor officials and those who had been given life sentences in Siberia.
The city has lived through a lot of trouble during the three centuries of its history - waves of wars, revolts and revolutions swept as far as Siberia, earthquakes and fires kept changing the city’s image. But still, Irkutsk has managed to preserve its singular look. The snow-white Church of the Savior and the Cathedral of Epiphany have survived since early days, and many log houses have become historical monuments.
During Soviet times Irkutsk was turned into a major center of power, of aluminium, pulp and paper industries and industrial chemistry,
while the tsars' prisons for revolutionaries and criminals were turned into Stalin's “zones” for now rehabilitated dissidents and “public enemies”.
"Weathered by history and life," wrote Irkutsk writer Valentin Rasputin, "Irkutsk now stands, calm and wise, knowing its own value, moderately famous for its glory, past and present, cultured since olden times and traditionally hospitable..."
Irkutsk Museum of Regional Studies
Operating hours: from 10:00am to 6:00pm, closed on Mondays.
Appeared in 1782, the second museum in Russia after the Museum, founded by Peter the Great in St. Petersburg. Housed in a building in the Mauritanian style with turrets, round windows with Oriental ornament, crowned with the dome of Siberia’s first observatory.
Over 350,000 exhibits, 250,000 of them - rarities. The life of Siberia from Prehistoric Age to present. Examples of primitive weapons and utensils of the Paleolithic and Neolithic Ages. Vast collection of minerals. Unique herbaria. Stuffed animals and birds. Old manuscripts. Logbooks of geographical and geological expeditions. Samples of clothing of all times. Handicrafts. Unique exhibits from China, Tibet and Mongolia of priceless value: Buddha statues made of bronze and papier-mache, tanka icons, masks and robes for Buddhist ceremonies, tambourines, drums, copper cymbals.
The Museum has the following branches: Natural Life Museum, show-rooms in the building of the Church of Our Saviour, Decembrists’ Museum House, Taltsy Museum of Architecture and Ethnography, Boat museum, Icebreaker “Angara”, Scientific Library and Funds.
The Sukachev’s Fine Arts Museum
Operating hours: from 10:00am to 6:00pm, closed on Tuesdays.
Founded in the 1870s as the Sukachev Picture Gallery. Before
the revolution city in tsarist Russia had such a collection except for St. Petersburg with its Emperor’s Hermitage and Moscow with its Tretyakov Art Gallery. Over 14,000 exhibits: pictures, sculptures, ceramics. Old church wooden sculptures. Icons of Novgorod, Siberian and other schools (16th-17th centuries). Canvases by the best Russian painters from the 18th-20th centuries: I. Repin, V. Polenov, K. Korovin, B. Kustodiev, P. Konchalovsky, F. Malyavin, K. Petrov-Vodkin, A. Plastov. Western European masters from the 16th-19th centuries. Collection of paintings from China, India and Japan. Applied Art. Works from modern artists and sculptors.
The Decembrists’ Memorial Complex
Operating hours: from 10:00am to 6:00pm
House-Museum of Trubetskoy, closed on Tuesdays, House-Museum of Volkonsky closed on Monday. Irkutsk is recognized as the Decembrists center of Russia. Museums have opened (in 1970, 1985) in houses where the families of Sergei Trubetskoy and Sergey Volkonsky lived.
There are genuine things which belonged to the Decembrists and replicas of those things which were lost, such as pieces of furniture, tableware, stoves, musical instruments, ancient chandeliers, embroidery, books, sheet music, pictures, photographs in the museums. On certain days, just like when the hosts were alive, the candles are lit, music is played and poetry and stories are recited.
Founding Place of Irkutsk
Founding Place of Irkutsk by Cossack soldiers of Yakov Pokhabov in 1661 - the oldest point of the city. Victory Square. Memorial to the Soviet People’s Victory in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945 with Eternal Flame. Church of Our Saviour - the oldest stone construction in the city, built in 1706. Cathedral of the Epiphany, consecrated in 1723. Catholic Church (used as an Organ Music Hall), built in 1884 in honor of the participants of the Polish national liberation movement against tsarism and, in particular, of the uprising of 1863.
Kirov Square
Kirov Square with a spacious park in its center with thick leafy maples, mountain ashes, poplars, and larches, colorful flowers. The biology and soil department of the University. Regional Administration Building. State University of Languages. City Hall. State Bank. Vostsibugol (Eastern-Siberian Coal-Mining Board). Irkutsk State Teachers’ Training University.
Labor Square
Palace of Youth - one of the most attractive buildings in Irkutsk, with an intricate brickwork design, built in 1897 for A. Vtorov, one of Siberia’s richest merchants. Central Telegraph Office. Circus.
Irkutsk Znamensky Convent
It’s founded in 1683. Behind the Znamensk church’s fence - Graves of the Decembrists: P. Mukhanov, N. Panov, V. Bechasnov. Tomb of Yekaterina Trubetskaya with three of her children - countess and wife of S. Trubetskoy, one of the founders and leaders of the Northern Secret Society - the first woman to follow her husband into exile in Siberia. Grave of G. Shelikhov (1748-1795) - merchant, traveler, seafarer, explorer, who reached Alaska and California, one of the founders of the Russian-American Company.
Karl Marx Street
It's the main street of Irkutsk. Out-patient Clinic. Okhlopkov Irkutsk Drama Theater. Dynamo Sports Complex. Irkutsk Museum of Regional Studies. Deer Stone. Revolutionary Fighters' Monument. White House - University’s Scientific library, containing over 3,000,000 volumes, incl. over 10,000 very rare books, Russian and foreign classics published during their authors’ lifetime, 529 unique manuscripts, 526 sets of very rare journals, other magazines and essays on different branches of knowledge.
Yuri Gagarin Boulevard
Memorial to the First Pioneers of Siberia, erected in 1908 to commemorate the completion of the Great Siberian Way (Trans-Siberian Railway). Wooden Houses with carvings. State University. Building of Medical University.
Lenin Street
Church of the Exaltation of the Cross. Musical Comedy Theater. Youth Theater. Fine Arts Museum.
The Taltsy Museum of Architecture and Ethnography
Operating hours: daily, from 10:00am to 5:00pm.
The Taltsy Museum of Architecture and Ethnography (the Wooden Architecture Museum) is appraised by decree from the President of the Russian Federation as a highly valuable object of cultural heritage of the peoples of Russia. Founded in 1969, the Taltsy museum is conveniently situated on the road to Lake Baikal, 47 km of the Baikal highway. Its 67-hectare territory is surrounded with a protected area. There are over 40 monuments of architectural heritage and 8,000 exhibits of high historical value.
Two architectural-ethnographical areas - Russian and Buryat - show a large variety of housing and life of the Siberians. The most valuable monuments in Taltsy are the Savior’s gate tower of the ostrog (fort) of Ilimsk (1667) and an active Kazan Chapel (1679). Both of them, as well as the houses near the Angara floodlands, were transferred to this place from the flooded areas of the Ust-Ilimskaya. Take the opportunity to see and be acquainted with the life of old Siberia.
Source of the Angara
The Angara is 1779 km long and is the only river flowing out of Lake Baikal. Travel to its source, and you’ll see the widest source in the world, it does not freeze during the most severe Siberian winters (width - 863 m , maximum depth - 4.8 m, speed - 5.1 km/h). In the middle of the river, at its head, rises a rock cliff 1.5 m high protected by the state as a natural relic mentioned in the legends of old times.
|
|
 |
A beautiful legend, well-known in Siberia, has it that Baikal the Old wanted to marry his beauty of a daughter to a young warrior named Irkut (one of the Angara tributaries). But Angara fell in love with another knight, Yenisey, and ran away to join him. The furious father cast the huge Shaman Cliff after her. East Siberia’s largest hibernation place of water fowl is to be found at the source of the Angara River. And of course there live beautiful and loud white sea gulls without which it is hard to imagine Lake Baikal and its shores. At the river bank right in front of the Shaman Cliff there is an observation platform with souvenir and snack kiosks.
The Baikal Museum
Operating hours: 9am - 7pm (in summer), 9am - 5pm (in winter).
The museum was established in 1928 when the Baikal Limnological Station opened in the village of Listvyanka (since 1961 - the Limnological Institute). Every year the Baikal Museum has more than 30,000 visitors. The unique exhibits tell about the origin and the history of the lake, its flora and fauna, geological structure, climate and tectonics of Prebaikalye.
Stuffed birds and animals. Collection of minerals. Models of the lake bed showing its history, the peculiarities of its shoreline and bottom. Baikal fish (omul, golomyanka, kharius, sturgeon, taimen, pike). Micro organisms inhabiting Baikal waters and destroying everything that might pollute the lake. Exhibits found in scientific expeditions. The tour of the museum includes a demonstration of a 20-minute video, "The Planet's Well" with unique shots filmed at the lake's deepest point of 1637 m. with the help of a deep-sea submersible vessel «Pisces».
Walking tour of Krestovka village with a visit to St. Nicholas' Church
Legend has it that Russian merchant Serebriakov was caught in a storm out on the lake and prayed to St. Nicholas (Protector of Navigators) for help. His prayers were answered and on his safe return he began to build a church to thank the saint (in 1846). Unfinished when he died, the church was completed by the merchant's wife. Located in Listvyanka village, the residents attend service held in the church. In the 1950-s the building was restored and many icons from other churches of Irkutsk were brought there among which are some rare items dating back to the 18th century.
Boat Ride
You will be astonished by the color metamorphoses of the lake’s surface, the ever-changing play of water and sky, taiga and cliffs.
The water absorbing the smallest weather changes, the angle of the sun rays, moving clouds, or mists coming from the taiga changes its shades from blue-white or silver-grey to piercing blue or slate-black with foam-capped waves. The transparency of Baikal water is miraculous - you see stones on the lake bottom and it is hard to believe there are some 20 to 30 meters of depth under the keel.
The ride begins at a pier in Listvyanka village which got its name from the listvennitsa (larch) trees that used to cover this part of the lake shore. The first settlement appeared in this place around 1725. Now it is the main Baikal harbour where the waterways crossing the lake start. The village is 68 km. from Irkutsk and stretches for 5 km. along the shoreline. Wooden houses overlooking the lake. A view of the Sayan Mountains, Port Baikal, the solar telescope. A stop ashore with an excursion to the ruins of the cave blown up during the tunnel construction on the Circumbaikal Railway Loop. Return to Listvyanka.
Picnic in the taiga forest or at the Angara river bank
The memories of this event will stay with you for many days to come. A walk in a real Siberian taiga, penetrating silence and scents of the virgin forest, delicious dinner in the open air with the traditional meat shashlyk and Baikal vodka made with the precious Baikal water and known among other Russian vodkas for its perfect quality. Accordeon-player will play Russian and Siberian folk songs creating a warm atmosphere and making the day one of the most memorable in your journey.
|
Our Destinations
About Us
About country
Irkutsk Museum of Regional Studies
Copyright 2004 Nordway,
phone/fax: 7 (495)739-54-12