Baikaler.com: Irkutsk, a main city of Siberia

Home / Tours / Overview

IRKUTSK, IRKUTSK… Sketch by Ellen Amand June 2002

Irkutsk city is very green and hot in summer, it is wooden, stone, ancient looking in its historical centre which is small and cozy… it is dusty and dirty and ruined somewhere (the last one is its permanent feature … maybe it is the deep philosophy of the place who knows… the Constanta), but it has its own siberian intelligent cultural look avoiding somehow the completely distruction… Now it is changing quikly for the best thanks to lots of new high redbrick buildings - rich apartment houses, reconstruction of pavements, old houses and churches. Irkutsk happened to develop in the main settlement in Baikal region and after 350 years of history it remains the nonofficial capital of Eastern Siberia. It has concentrated science, education, culture, the best examples of Siberian art and architecture…
…Established just on the banks of the Angara River - the only outflow of Baikal Lake - Irkutsk found itself in the very right place from the progress' point of view - since then the general stream of life went through it and formed the active and modern and unique face of the city…
Traders, pioneers, merchants, travelers, missioners, gold miners, VIPs, great persons, exiles, condemned people, runaways… as well as less or more important events and ideas of the country became the part of its life and history.

… Irkutsk grew and widened in a flowerlike form from its oldest part, but namely the ancient center bears the principal value, the main load of history - every square meter of it keeps its own story - just look and see… just try to know… just feel and respect…
…Life is boiling in the city center - there are night clubs, casinos, restaus, cafes, beer bars, Russian-styled tavernas… crowds of people, intensive traffic, rather safe night life - peaceful people can be seen walking along the streets at deep night though the city has all modern diseases like narcomanie etc… the overcrowded embankment is the commonly beloved place to kill time… There are three cinemas in the center (not many?..) - with the brand-new repertoire, concert halls, Sport Palace…
Four theaters, Organ-Hall in the former Catholic Cathedral, numerous WEB-cafes, supermarkets and everything else to feel yourself just in a European city. Plus some though common now exotics like Japanese and Chinese and Italian restaus...
Fruits from all over the world… flowers just from Holland… Second hand shops - clothes right from the West… …and Art market close to the big Book shop Antey at the corner of Lenin and Karl Marx Street, many souvenir shops full with precious stones, wooden artifacts and other typical Russian Siberian handicrafts… Four Unis, many colleges, Economic Academe, theater and music and art schools… Youth from the whole region comes here confirming another nick of Irkutsk - a students' city. …mainly old houses built by richest merchants survived their destination - it is of interest as shows reasonable brains of Siberians and allow to feel oneself comfortable in the uninterrupted flow of time and life, when the past is not cut off the present… though it was.

…The black horrible and terrible 30s were like another great fire, Force Major … What was lost then - is a great pain to every citizen's heart. Enough to say that at the place of the chief municipal administrative huge ugly gray house there was a magnificent 60metershigh Kazansky Cathedral which had no equal beyond the Ural Mountains. Destructed in 1932 with some explosions it rose the level of the ground of the Kirov Square with its remains… The harmonic ensemble of four churches in a circle incl. Spasskaya, Bogoyvlenskaya, Catholic Cathedral was spoiled for ever. Plus the demolished also Chapel at the place of another gloomy gray building next to the Kostyol. So one may see now the second plan of the city - as if IN TIME - the "lost Irkutsk"…

Just beyond the Angara Bridge (which is the memorial of the technique itself) on the right bank of the River limited with the main 2km long street - Karl Marx (the former Bolshaya, i.e. Big )Street lies epicentre of the city. Maybe by the providence of God the first Irkutsk church - Spasskaya (Of Our Saviour) stands still on its own place from 1672… Saviour saved Himself?.. Well, here began Irkutsk!..

Like way-indicating stars stand churches here and there… At the highest place of the city the most interesting and what is more, working and of federal significance the Church of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross stands… There are 22 from 34 churches left in the city now… only 6 - in sufficient condition. Head for them and go along the streets. Look at the wooden art by your way, at all these whimsical laces made patiently hundred years ago, at these big windows in old merchants' houses (obviously Siberians preferred much light inside, did not they?..), look at all these old shabby but still beautiful and impressive like an aged Beauty windows shutters - by the way everything here shows the citizen sort of log architecture.
81,8% from the whole historical heritage of Irkutsk made architecture memorials… There are more than 650 wooden houses of about 100 years old, 250 - stone. 105 among them are not younger than 150 years… 1 wooden house, 5 stone houses, 9 churches came from the 18th century… So Irkutsk is a unique city according to the richness and variety of its architecture which is the most visual testimony altogether, available for everybody - just come and look and see…
Life seems to had been peaceable, happy and long in these houses made obviously with full respect for both everyday life needs and aesthetic demands of that time. Now they make one to feel even their soul, to admire them and to experience a nostalgia...