Eastern Siberia
If you’re on the Decembrist trail through Siberia, this small but comprehensive museum is one of the best. It’s housed in the 18th-century Archangel…
Must-see attractions in Eastern Siberia
Krasnoyarsk
Russia's most visited national park is located right across the river from Krasnoyarsk's city centre. Its highlight are the fingers of volcanic rock…
Tuva
One of Tuva’s ‘must sees’, the National Museum’s huge modern home contains the usual arrangements of stuffed animals, WWII artefacts and dusty minerals,…
Krasnoyarsk
Krasnoyarsk's Lenin museum was opened on the occasion of the October Revolution's 70th anniversary in 1987, only to see the entire communist system…
Eastern Siberia
The confident epicentre of Russian Buddhism owes its existence to none other than Josef Stalin, who reversed the Bolshevik policy of destroying temples…
Ulan-Ude
Roosting high above the city’s far north, the inside of this new and unexpectedly modern Tibetan temple looks like a kind of Buddhist-themed bus terminal,…
Listvyanka
Listvyanka’s best viewpoint, overlooking the source of the Angara, is named after Jan Czerski, a 19th-century Polish gentleman explorer. It is best…
Ulan-Ude
Ulan-Ude’s main square is entirely dominated by the world’s largest Lenin head that creates an ensemble with the grey constructivist government building…
Tuva
The attractive two-storey timber building of the Centre for Tuvan Culture was founded in 2012 by legendary Tuvan musician Kongar-ol Ondar, who was its…
Krasnoyarsk
Housed in an incongruously attractive 1912 art nouveau Egyptian temple, this is one of Siberia’s better museums. Arranged around a Cossack explorer’s ship…
Lake Baikal
Traders bring Mongolian herbs, spices, clothes and leather items from across the nearby border to this colourful makeshift market that stretches for a few…
Irkutsk
The duck-egg-blue and white home of Decembrist Count Sergei Volkonsky, whose wife Maria Volkonskaya cuts the main figure in Christine Sutherland’s…
Tuva
This broad grassy vale begins a few kilometres beyond a turning off the M54 highway north of Turan. It’s famous in archaeological circles for its pancake…
Ulan-Ude
The pedestrianised street abutting Odigitria Cathedral preserves the spirit and the wooden lace architecture of the old downtown, populated by merchants…
Irkutsk
Stranded on the wrong side of a thundering roundabout, the 1762 Znamensky Monastery is 1.9km northeast of Skver Kirova. Echoing with mellifluous plainsong…
Tuva
If you take a map of the world, cut out Asia and balance the continent on a pin, the centre of gravity would be Kyzyl. Well, only if you’ve used the…
Eastern Siberia
Filling three distinct buildings, the countless halls crammed with local taxidermy, Bronze and Iron Age finds, Tuvan and Khakass standing stones,…
Irkutsk
What does a city boasting some of Siberia’s most impressive original timber architecture do to improve the visitor experience? Yes, that’s right,…
Ulan-Ude
In a forest clearing 6km from central Ulan-Ude, this outdoor collection of local architecture plus some reconstructed burial mounds and the odd stone…
Eastern Siberia
Completed in 1985, this stunning feat of engineering blocks a beautiful forested canyon cut through the Sayan mountains by the mighty Yenisey. At 242m,…
Shushenskoe Ethnographic Museum
Eastern Siberia
For the 1970 centenary of Lenin’s birth, a two-block area of the village centre was reconstructed to look as it had in 1870. These well-kept ‘old’…
Irkutsk
Irkutsk’s second Decembrist house-museum emerged from a recent renovation with English-language information, touchscreens and tinkling background music…
Eastern Siberia
The epicentre of SB’s world is a striking construction with a nostalgically stranded steam locomotive standing guard to the right. The sweeping…
Ulan-Ude
UU’s striking Stalinist-era theatre reopened after lengthy renovation in 2011 (the first performance was for a group of foreign tourists from the luxury…
Krasnoyarsk
Occupying a glorious 1911 merchant’s mansion, this wonderfully restored museum highlights various aspects of Siberian life that inspired authors who wrote…
Eastern Siberia
Some 12km from Tsentralny, this impressive open-air ethnographic museum contains a rare 17th-century wooden watchtower and buildings rescued from…
Olkhon Island
The unmistakable Shaman Rocks are neither huge nor spectacular, but they have become the archetypal Baikal vista found on postcards and travel-guide…
Eastern Siberia
First founded in 1741, this was Buryatiya’s first Buddhist monastery and the mother ship of Russian Buddhism for two centuries. The original complex,…
Eastern Siberia
Once the centre of Buryat Buddhist scholarship with an important scriptorium, this datsan was completely destroyed in the 1930s, but has crawled back to…
Eastern Siberia
The unexpectedly lively Kuznetsov Regional Museum has been around since 1895 and the imposing mansion it currently occupies was purpose-built to house it…
Irkutsk
A small park on the edge of the historical centre contains a smattering of beautiful wood-lace buildings and arbours. These house exhibitions dedicated to…
Listvyanka
This garden near the St Nicholas Church is full of wacky sculpture pieces fashioned from old Soviet-era cars and motorbikes. You can check out a few…
Ulan-Ude
Occupying the merchant’s house where imperial heir Nicholas II stayed in 1891, this small but progressive museum has exhibits examining Verkhneudinsk’s…
Irkutsk
Opened in 2016, this lovely gallery puts in the spotlight Russian and Soviet sculpture previously kept in the city's main art museum and private…
Irkutsk
A large and sparkling new modern-art venue that most prominently features a collection of Dashi Namdakov’s sculptures inspired by Buddhist prayer dolls…
Lake Baikal
The Banya Museum displays four traditional timber bani lovingly fashioned by national park ranger and guide, Alexander Beketov, who also runs a very…
Irkutsk
Adorning the Angara embankment, a recast statue of Alexander III (a copy of the 1904 original) has the only tsar ever to visit Siberia looking as though…
Lake Baikal
Geology buffs should consider heading to the privately run Baikal Mineral Museum, which claims to exhibit every mineral known to man.
Tuva
This Tibetan-styled white building with oriental wooden flourishes is the city’s most architecturally distinctive structure.
Krasnoyarsk
The city's vast central square showcases Soviet-era architectural classics in all their Stalinist glory – complete with colonnaded government buildings…
![Western Siberian Eagle Owl [Bubo Bubo Sibericus] in full flight](https://lp-cms-production.imgix.net/2019-06/531770715_high.jpg?auto=format&fit=crop&w=360&ar=1:1&q=75)
