Alexander Katashevtsev - The Most Detailed Travel Guide around Irkutsk. All the attractions with the route of movement & addresses

E.G. Laxman on Japanese engravings

At the crossroads we run into a wooden house of Pyatidesyatnikov and turn left. This quarter is full of beautiful wooden apartment buildings from the late 19th century. Particularly notable is the pink mansion with its brick stone outbuilding, which belonged to a certain Bibikov and where lived for a long time one of the founders of Writers’ Union of Irkutsk, as well as a delegate to the first Congress of Soviet Writers I.G. Goldberg.

Irkutsk is undoubtedly considered the “wooden capital” of Russia. No other city has so many monuments of wooden architecture as here, and there is not such a variety of styles and forms of carving. And, besides, only a few cities in Russia has preserved entire blocks of wooden buildings – these are Kyakhta, Tomsk, Irkutsk and Vologda. Today more than 760 wooden houses are under protection, but it is not possible to restore them all due to the small budget of the city. Therefore, today the prerogative is on the side of foundations that buy houses and restore them, subsequently renting them out or putting them up for sale.

If we drive a little more along Marat Street, then on the right side we can see the first five-story building in the history of Irkutsk, which was built in 1934 according to the project of K.W. Mital, who himself lived in this house (Marat st., 29). The foundation of this building was made of bricks from the destroyed Kazan Cathedral. About this house the Irkutsk writer G.S. Stom (Apartsina) wrote the book “Our Home”. And this is no coincidence, because in different years here lived the famous doctors ophthalmologist Z.G. Frank-Kamenetsky, neuropathologist K.G. Hodos, otorhinolaryngologist I.M. Krukover, histologist S.I. Timofeev and surgeon V.G. Shchipachev, one of the founders of Russian balneology and creator of health resorts “Arshan”, “Darasun”, “Shivanda” and “Ugdan” – M.P. Mikhailov, founder of the Department of Geography of ISU and creator of the plan for the Angarsk HPP cascade – professor K.N. Mirotvortsev. In addition, here in the family of her parents, odontologist S.I. Weiss and dentist E.M. Emelyanova, lived one of the most famous Soviet pop singers – A.S. Vedischeva.

The first five-story building in Irkutsk

But at the next intersection, we turn left to Sverdlov Street and on the right there is another incredible mansion which built in the Romanesque style – it is the former Bazanov orphanage, which today houses the faculty clinics of the IMSU for eye and ENT diseases. The complex of buildings was created by the architect H.V. Rosen in 1883 to replace the building lost in the Great Fire, which had been located in the same place since 1874. The owner of the orphanage I.I. Bazanov did not live to see the resumption of the activity for only two months.

Bazanov orphanage,

In Russia in 19th century, there were only eight such institutions, due to the very high mortality rate of adopted children they were not popular. Children were brought to the gates of the orphanage, where there was a special tray in which a desperate mothers left babies than they pulled the bell and ran away. No one ever tried to find out the secret of a women in childbirth. All the boys, upon completion of their education, received the surname of Bazanov and a profession, as soon as the girls received a dowry.

Merchant I.I. Bazanov

Opposite the orphanage behind a fence hides the stone mansion of Irkutsk merchant of the 2nd guild I.V. Samsonov, which was built in the middle of the 19th century and one of the few survived the Great Fire of 1879. After the construction of the hotel “Sibir” nearby, it remained in oblivion and today is in a sorrowful condition. From April to July 1915 there was an underground printing of the Bolshevik organization “Union of Printing Workers”. In Soviet times, communal apartments were appeared in the house.

Mansion of merchant I.V. Samsonov

On the other side of the intersection, on the left, you can see the building of the oldest bank in Irkutsk. These is a former State Bank, established in 1899, which today is occupied by the Faculties of Geology and Social Sciences of ISU, as well as the Research Institute of Biology. The building was badly burned out during the revolutionary battles in 1917, and was rebuilt several years later with tetrahedral and octahedral domes that accentuated the building’s volumes.

State Bank

Across the road from it to the right is the building of the largest and oldest museum of arts in Siberia, which has more than 23 thousand works of painting, graphics, sculpture and decorative arts in its collection. The collection was based on the assemblage of the famous Irkutsk philanthropist and mayor V.P. Sukachev, who held the first exhibition back in 1874 and left his creation to Irkutsk shortly before the revolution. It is his name that the museum bears, which counts its creation from 25 April 1936.

The building itself was originally built for the needs of the Irkutsk gymnasium for boys in 1907 according to the project of D.R. Magidey. The main fund of the museum moved here in 1975, and despite the existence of three branches the exposition contains no more than 3% of all works of art.

Irkutsk gymnasium for boys

The nearby building of the Governorate Gymnasium for boys is also interesting. It’s opened here in 1805 and still is one of the oldest stone buildings in Irkutsk which was built back in 1799 for the needs of the main public school according to the project of A.I. Losev. Count M.M. Speransky, when he was the governor-general of Siberia, called this institution “authentically the best gymnasium in all of Russia.” And this is not surprising, since among the teachers there were such prominent historians as I.E. Muller, I.L. Slovtsov, I.V. Shcheglov and N.N. Kozmin.

Founder of the Soviet school in agronomic chemistry D.N. Pryanishnikov