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Irkutsk is the largest city of Irkutsk Oblast in Eastern Siberia, on the Angara River about 66 kilometres from Lake Baikal, famous as the gateway to Baikal, for its carved wooden houses and for the Decembrists who lived here in exile. About 600,000 people live in the city, a stop on the Trans-Siberian Railway.
Irkutsk began as a small fort built in 1661 and received town rights in 1686. It grew rich on the trade routes to China and became the seat of the governor-general of Eastern Siberia. After the revolt of 1825 many exiled Decembrist nobles settled here and shaped its cultural life, and by the time the railway arrived the city was nicknamed the Paris of Siberia. A great fire in 1879 destroyed much of the old town.
Today the historic centre is on the UNESCO tentative list. Visitors see early stone churches in the Siberian Baroque style, the houses of the Decembrists and the rebuilt wooden 130th Quarter, and stroll along the Angara on Gagarin Boulevard. Many then travel on to Listvyanka on the shore of Baikal, stopping at the open-air museum of Taltsy on the way.
The 130th Quarter in Irkutsk is a special zone of historic buildings at the foot of Krestovaya Hill in the south of the old centre. Its triangle of streets gathers dozens of listed wooden and stone houses, many with carved window frames, and is now full of cafes, shops and evening crowds.
The Epiphany Cathedral on the Lower Angara Embankment is the second-oldest stone building in Irkutsk and was the cathedral of the diocese in the 18th and 19th centuries. A wooden church of the 1690s burned in 1716, and the brick church that replaced it held its first service in 1724.
The Church of the Saviour in Irkutsk stands on the site of the lost Irkutsk kremlin and is one of the first stone buildings in the city. It was built in 1706 to 1710, with the bell tower added in 1758 to 1762, and it is the only church in Siberia whose outer walls are covered with paintings.
The Holy Cross Church in Irkutsk was built of stone in 1747 to 1760 on Krestovaya Hill and is the most original monument of Siberian Baroque. Rich carved ornament covers all of its outer walls, and the explorer Gennady Nevelskoy was married here in 1851, as a plaque on the wall recalls.
The Irkutsk Decembrists Museum occupies the estates of Prince Sergei Trubetskoy and Prince Sergei Volkonsky, two leaders of the 1825 revolt who lived in Irkutsk in exile. Its two wooden houses and yards tell of the Decembrists' life in hard labour and settlement in Eastern Siberia.
The Irkutsk Regional Museum was founded in 1782 with money raised by the governor from local nobles and merchants. After the fire of 1879 destroyed its collection, it moved into a new building on the embankment in Irkutsk, and it now shows the history and nature of the region.
The Sukachev Irkutsk Regional Art Museum is one of the richest art collections in Siberia, with more than 23,000 works. It grew from the gallery of the Irkutsk mayor Vladimir Sukachev and shows Russian, Western and Asian art in several historic mansions in the city centre.
The Icebreaker Angara is a museum ship in Irkutsk and the oldest vessel of its kind in Russia. It was built in Newcastle in England, carried to Lake Baikal in pieces and put together in 1900, then worked on the lake for almost five decades before it became a museum in 1991.
Gagarin Boulevard in Irkutsk runs along the right bank of the Angara from Kozhov Street to the Glazkovsky Bridge and is one of the oldest streets in the city. Once simply called the Embankment, it took its present name in 1961 and is a favourite place for walks and festivals.
Znamensky Monastery in Irkutsk is one of the oldest monasteries in Siberia, founded in 1689 where the Ushakovka river flows into the Angara. Its stone cathedral dates from 1762, and beside the convent stands a monument to Admiral Kolchak, unveiled in 2004 near the place of his execution.
The Taltsy Museum is an open-air museum of architecture and folk life on the right bank of the Angara, 41 kilometres southeast of Irkutsk. Founded in 1969, it gathers more than 40 wooden buildings from villages flooded by the Angara dams, including houses, churches and a fort tower.
Listvyanka is a village on the shore of Lake Baikal about 65 kilometres from Irkutsk, near the point where the Angara flows out of the lake. Named after the larch trees of a nearby cape, it stretches for five kilometres along the water and is the most popular day trip from the city.
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