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Cheboksary is the capital and largest city of Chuvashia, a city of about 500,000 people and a river port on the right bank of the Volga, where the small Cheboksarka River flows into the Cheboksary Reservoir. Its Chuvash name is Shupashkar, and the city lies 768 kilometres by rail from Moscow.
A Bulgar and Chuvash settlement stood here by the 14th century, and Cheboksary was first mentioned in writing in 1469. Russians built a fortress in 1555, the Vvedensky Cathedral and the Holy Trinity Monastery followed, and the town became a busy Volga trading place, gaining town status in 1781. In the late 20th century the old lower town was flooded to form the Bay.
Visitors start at Cheboksary Bay, climbing to the Mother Monument and walking to the Vvedensky Cathedral and the Holy Trinity Monastery. Krasnaya Square holds the National Museum and the drama theatre, and the art museum, the opera house and the oaks of Lakreevsky Forest fill the rest of a stay.
Cheboksary Resurrection Church is an 18th-century stone church in the old town, finished by 1758, with a clergy house thought to date from the 1700s, and both are federal monuments. Closed in 1941 and later used by a printing works, it was restored in 1989-1993 and has a parish again.
Cheboksary Bay is the water and architecture complex in the heart of Cheboksary, made by flooding the old lower town where the Cheboksarka River meets the Volga. Work began in 1978, a dam called the Road to the Temple later raised its water level, and its ponds and embankments are loved by locals.
Vvedensky Cathedral is the oldest building of Cheboksary and of all Chuvashia, a federal monument and the cathedral of the Chuvash metropolis. A church was founded on the site in the kremlin in 1555 by a charter of Ivan the Terrible, and the present stone cathedral was built in the 1650s or 1660s.
The Cheboksary Holy Trinity Monastery was founded in 1566 by order of Ivan the Terrible to spread Orthodoxy among the peoples of the Volga, and stands on the left bank of Cheboksary Bay where the Cheboksarka meets the river. Burned in 1609, it was rebuilt, and Catherine the Great visited it in 1767.
The Chuvash National Museum is the largest store of the nature, history and culture of the Chuvash and other peoples, with more than 212,000 items from the Stone Age to today. It stands on Krasnaya Square in Cheboksary and leads all museum work in Chuvashia, with branches like the Chapaev Museum.
The Chuvash State Art Museum in Cheboksary holds more than 20,000 paintings, drawings, sculptures and works of folk and decorative art. Its three permanent displays cover icons, Russian and foreign art of the 18th to 20th centuries and Chuvash artists, and it also hosts concerts and poetry evenings.
The Chapaev Museum is a branch of the Chuvash National Museum in Cheboksary, telling the Civil War story of Vasily Chapaev, who was born nearby. Opened on 9 May 1974, it stands in Chapaev Square beside his monument, and in 1986 the house where he was born was moved next to the museum building.
Krasnaya Square is one of the oldest squares of Cheboksary, the former Bazaar Square, and forms one ensemble with Cheboksary Bay. The Chuvash drama theatre and a monument to the poet Konstantin Ivanov stand here, and of the three churches that once lined it only the Assumption Church survives.
The Chuvash Opera and Ballet Theatre in Cheboksary was formed in 1993 from the musical theatre whose story began in 1960 with the first Chuvash opera, The Water Mill. Since 1991 it has hosted the yearly Maxim Mikhailov International Opera Festival, and it also uses the brand name Volga Opera.
The Chuvash Drama Theatre named after Konstantin Ivanov is the oldest theatre of Chuvashia and one of the first national theatres in the country. Founded in Kazan on 27 January 1918, it moved to Cheboksary in 1920 with Chuvash plays and Russian classics in Chuvash, and stands on Krasnaya Square.
The Chuvash State Puppet Theatre in Cheboksary grew from a touring puppet troupe formed in 1943 in Yadrin by actors evacuated from besieged Leningrad. Opened in Cheboksary on 20 September 1944, it has created more than 200 shows, mixing European puppet traditions with Chuvash ones.
Cheboksary Botanical Garden is the branch of the Tsitsin Main Botanical Garden of the Russian Academy of Sciences, spread over 177.7 hectares along the Kukshum River. Fed by 12 springs, it has woods, a large pond and about 2,000 species and varieties of plants, with an arboretum of 600.
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