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Tomsk is the capital of Tomsk Oblast in western Siberia, a city of about 550,000 people on the Tom River. Founded in 1604 as a fortress by decree of Tsar Boris Godunov, it is one of the oldest cities in Siberia, and in 1804 it became the seat of a huge province that stretched far across the region.
Gold discovered in 1830 brought wealth, but when the Trans-Siberian Railway bypassed the city in the 1890s, Tomsk reinvented itself as a center of learning. Tomsk State University, the oldest in Siberia, and Tomsk Polytechnic University were founded here, and so many students lived in the city that it became known as the Siberian Athens.
Today Tomsk is best known for its traditional wooden houses with intricate carved decoration. Visitors can climb Resurrection Hill where the town began, walk the embankment of the Tom with its cheeky Chekhov statue, and explore old churches, a large botanical garden and good museums.
White Lake is a small lake on Resurrection Hill in the historic center of Tomsk, the hill where the town began. For a long time its clean water was used for drinking and fighting fires, and in the 1870s it was deepened into a neat oval and planted with trees, with bathing places in summer.
The Resurrection Church stands on the cape of Resurrection Hill in Tomsk, the hill named after it. A wooden church stood here from 1622, and the present stone church, built in the rare Siberian Baroque style to a model design by Rastrelli, was begun in 1789 and consecrated in 1803.
Lenin Square is the oldest square in Tomsk, set on a small peninsula between the Tom River and its tributary the Ushaika. The first Cossack settlers are said to have camped here, the town's lower quarter grew up around it, and several of the city's main streets begin at the square.
The Epiphany Cathedral on Lenin Square is one of the oldest churches in Tomsk, rising on the site of a wooden church of 1630. The present Baroque building was begun in 1777 and first consecrated in 1784, and it was here on 6 August 1804 that the creation of the Tomsk Province was proclaimed.
Tomsk is known across Russia for its traditional wooden houses decorated with intricate carved trim, often called gingerbread decoration. Carved window frames, eaves and gables line many old streets of the historic center, and a slow walk among them is one of the great pleasures of a visit to Tomsk.
The Tom River Embankment is a riverside street in Tomsk running from Lenin Square past the river station. It is lined with old buildings such as the Gogol House school of 1905 and the Gorokhov warehouses, and on summer Fridays it hosts the Chekhov Fridays, a series of events first held in 2005.
The Chekhov Monument on the Tom embankment in Tomsk is a caricature statue of the writer, barefoot with huge feet, unveiled in 2004 for the city's 400th birthday. Its inscription says it shows Chekhov as seen by a drunk lying in a ditch, a joke in reply to his unkind words about Tomsk in 1890.
Lagerny Garden is a large park of about 40 hectares on the high right bank of the Tom in Tomsk, named after the summer camps of the Tomsk infantry regiment once held here. Its central alley forms a memorial to the soldiers of Tomsk who died in the Second World War, opened in 1979.
Tomsk State University is the oldest university in Siberia, founded in 1878 with the support of Siberian merchants and industrialists such as Sibiryakov and Demidov. It gave the city its name of Siberian Athens and is now one of the 29 national research universities of Russia.
The Siberian Botanical Garden of Tomsk State University was the first botanical garden beyond the Urals. Its collection holds about 8,000 kinds of plants, half of them tropical species in the greenhouses, and its central greenhouse, 31 meters high, is among the tallest in the world.
The Tomsk Regional Museum is the largest museum of its kind in the Tomsk region, with more than 230,000 items. It occupies the Empire-style mansion built in 1838-1842 for the gold miner Ivan Astashev, and the house has held museum exhibitions since the first one opened here in 1922.
The Tomsk Art Museum was created in 1979 and opened to visitors in 1982 in a former apartment house of the merchant Natalia Orlova, built in 1903. Its collection grew from the art department of the regional museum and includes works by Russian masters such as Vasily Surikov and Pyotr Konchalovsky.
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