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Yakutsk is the capital of the Sakha Republic, a city of about 355,000 people and a major port on the Lena River some 450 kilometres south of the Arctic Circle. It is the coldest city of over 200,000 people in the world, with a record low of -64.4 degrees, and the largest city built on continuous permafrost.
Cossacks led by Pyotr Beketov founded the Lena fort in 1632, and in 1642 it was moved to the present site, becoming the core of Yakutsk, which gained city status in 1708. Because of the frozen ground, many houses in the city are built on concrete piles. In summer the Lena is open to shipping, and boat cruises sail upriver to the Lena Pillars.
Visitors walk the wooden streets of the Old Town to the fort tower and the Transfiguration Cathedral, then see khomus jew's harps, Sakha history and art in the city's museums. The ice halls of the Kingdom of Permafrost and the opera house complete a stay.
Yakutsk Old Town is a historic quarter in the centre of Yakutsk where the wooden and stone buildings of the late 19th and early 20th centuries were recreated as an open-air museum. Rebuilt from around 2000 after fires had destroyed most old merchant houses, it is paved with round wooden blocks.
The Yakutsk Fort Tower recalls the fort that the streltsy officer Pyotr Beketov founded on the Lena in 1632, moved in 1642 to the site of today's city. The old wooden tower, a symbol of Yakutsk, burned down in an arson attack in August 2002 and was soon rebuilt as a copy in the Old Town.
The Yakutsk Transfiguration Cathedral is a five-domed brick church with a refectory and a tented bell tower, begun in 1826 with money from the merchant Mikhail Solovyov and finished by his sons in 1846. Closed in the 1930s and used as a hotel and a library, it was consecrated again in 2001.
Yakutsk Lenin Square lies in the centre of the city on both sides of Lenin Avenue, on the site of the Gostiny Dvor, the largest trading building of old Yakutsk, pulled down in 1957. A bronze Lenin has stood here since 1967, and a rebuilding of the square, begun in 2019, was finished in 2024.
The Yaroslavsky Yakutsk Museum is the oldest and one of the largest museums of Yakutia, founded in 1887 by the regional statistical committee and opened to visitors in 1891 in a shop of the Gostiny Dvor. Its archaeology, ethnography, history and nature collections tell the story of the North.
The National Art Museum of the Sakha Republic in Yakutsk is the largest art collection in north-eastern Siberia, begun with 27 paintings given by the Tretyakov Gallery in 1928. It holds works by Levitan, Shishkin and Korovin and by foreign masters, but its largest part is the art of Yakutia.
The Khomus Museum of the Peoples of the World in Yakutsk, founded on 30 November 1990, is devoted to the khomus, the jew's harp of the Sakha people. Built on the collection of Ivan Alekseyev, it holds 1,613 jew's harps from 52 countries, with old Yakut ones of the 18th and 19th centuries.
Archy House in Yakutsk is the spiritual centre of the Sakha people, where visitors learn about the traditions, culture and beliefs of the local peoples. Its building is styled as a Yakut tent, and guests can watch rites led by a shaman and join some of them, such as a blessing from the spirits.
The Kingdom of Permafrost is a year-round attraction on the Vilyuy Highway on the edge of Yakutsk, a glacier inside a hill where the air stays between -10 and -4 degrees. Opened in 2005, it has ice sculptures by Yakut masters, the throne hall of Chyskhaan, lord of cold, and an ice bar.
The Shergin Shaft is a well 116.6 metres deep dug through the permafrost in Yakutsk in the 19th century for the merchant F. Shergin, lined with larch logs. Temperatures measured in it gave the first instrumental proof of permafrost at depth, and it is a protected historic monument.
The Yakutsk Opera and Ballet Theatre, named after Dmitry Sivtsev, has its roots in the ballet troupe and singers who began work in 1940. Its 643-seat building was raised in 1982, and in 1991 the music theatre that worked there was turned into a full theatre of opera and ballet.
The Sakha Academic Theatre named after Platon Oyunsky is the main theatre of the Sakha Republic, staging drama in the Yakut language. It counts its birth from the premiere of Neustroyev's comedy The Evil Spirit on 17 October 1925, took Oyunsky's name in 1934 and became academic in 1995.
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