Sights in Eastern Trans Siberian
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Vladivostok Fortress Museum
Attention fort fans: Vladivostok teems with sprawling, rather unique subterranean forts (130 in all) built between the 1880s and early 20th century to ward off potential Japanese (or American) attacks. Neophytes are best sticking with the easily accessible Vladivostok Fortress Museum, overlooking Sportivnaya Harbour. This hilltop museum is built in a fort that operated from 1882 to 1923, and is now home to many cannons and a five-room indoor exhibit of models, photos and artefacts – all refreshingly subtitled in English. You can climb onto (and aim) anti-aircraft guns pointing towards Hokkaido. You reach the fort from ul Zapadnaya.
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Antique Automobile Museum
If you’re a bit of a car (or Soviet) nerd, the newish Antique Automobile Museum – stranded under the smoke of a nearby factory in east Vladivostok – is an absolute classic. A room full of Sovietmobiles (motorcycles, too) from the 1930s to 1970s, includes a 1948 M&M-green GAZ-20 ‘Pobeda’ (Victory). If they start selling reproductions of the poster with an acrobat on a motorcycle holding a Stalin flag, send us one, please! Take bus 31 along ul Svetlanskaya and exit after it reaches ul Borisenko’s end.
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Arsenev Regional Museum
Grey-haired ladies keep watch over every Russian museum in existence, but none do it more sweetly than at the interesting Arsenev Regional Museum, which dates from 1890. You’re likely to befriend at least a couple of ‘guards’ while walking through the three floors of exhibits recounting Vladivostok history. Exhibits are in Russian only, but it’s still enjoyable for non-Russian speakers. On the 1st floor note the stuffed tiger and bear interlocked as if dancing; the 2nd floor is filled with great 19th-century photos of Vlad’s early days, including a display of the Brynner family; also note the turn-of-the-last-century telephone booth and a collection of samovars anchored b…
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C
Primorsky Art Gallery
Vladivostok’s bipolar art museum, the Primorsky Art Gallery, has a small collection at its original locale (ul Aleutskaya 12), but the main collection has moved indefinitely to two separate halls east of Park Provotsky (with separate admissions). The one to the west features 19th- and early 20th-century oil masters (including Feshin’s sassy Golden Hairs from 1914), packed onto limited wall space. The east gallery features changing exhibits of local painters (when we dropped by they featured fascinating graphic artwork from ’60s Soviet-ho! books).
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Regional History Museum
The Regional History Museum offers a series of well laid-out halls in an evocative 1894 red-brick building. Highlights are many, particularly a far-better-than-average look into native cultures, a few English captions in the stuffed-animal section, and a full-on panorama of the snowy 1922 civil war battle at Volochaevka. No Gulag coverage, though the nearby prison population was bigger than the city’s in the ’30s. At research time, the museum was busy adding on a second wing as the Amur RiverMuseum, which may require an additional ticket.
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Fort No 7
Sixteen protective forts encircle Vladivostok. The best (but pricey) is the hill-top Fort No 7, 14km north of the centre. It has 1.5km of tunnels, pretty much untouched since the last 400 soldiers stationed here left. (The sole inhabitants now include two pet cats to keep rats out.) Views are good too. Visiting on your own is very difficult, as the fort doesn't keep regular hours and it's hard to find. Organise a trip through an agency instead.
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E
S-56 Submarine
Keeping with the aquatic theme, the S-56 submarine is worth a look. The first half is a ho-hum exhibit of badges and photos of men with badges (all in Russian). Keep going: towards the back you can climb through porthole doors to peek at various rooms, including a lounge of sorts and a bunk room with Christmas-coloured torpedos. Outside note the ‘14’, marking the WWII sub’s ‘kills’.
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Museum of the Battle Fame
At the Museum of the Battle Fame, in a fine old pillared building, a guy in a navy outfit will probably help you put shoe covers on for the carpeted floors of the three-floor exhibit. The museum is geared chiefly to border patrol history (despite its more marketable war-oriented name), with imaginative 'boat' and 'plane' doors to such-themed rooms. Up top you can spy on hipsters outside through high-definition binoculars.
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City Park
A pleasant City Park stretches 1.5km downriver (northwards). On the promontory is a cliff-top tower in which a troupe of WWI Austro-Hungarian POW musicians was shot dead for refusing to play the Russian Imperial anthem. It now contains a café, Kafe Utyos. Opposite the tower is a statue of Count Nikolai Muravyov-Amursky.
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Regional Museum
The Regional Museum has exhibits on local Jewish history (including an ad for a cheesy 1980s band Freilekhs), plus boars and bears and a mini- diorama of the Volochaevka civil war battle (akin to Khabarovsk’s bigger one, but here blood pours from the 3-D dead guy’s head).
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Military Museum
The Military Museum is a not uninteresting four-room frenzy of battle-axes, guns, knives, and busts and photos of moustached heroes of past conflicts. Lined up in the back courtyard are army trucks, cannons, tanks and a luxury officers-only rail carriage dating from 1926.
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WWII Memorial
Khabarovsk's bombastic WWII memorial is close to the waterfront and a strip of beach that's very popular with sunbathers on hot days. Nearby there's a string of summertime food stalls, the landing stages for suburban river boats and the new multidomed Church of the Transfiguration.
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Amur Regional Museum
Amur Regional Museum is housed in a former tsarist-era market and Soviet-era HQ for the Communist Youth League (Komsomol). Inside are a whopping 26 halls, with plenty of interesting photos, 1960s record players, and a meteor that fell in 1991 near Tynda.
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Yul Brynner’s House
On ul Aleutskaya you’ll find Yul Brynner’s house where The King and I actor was born. Don’t tribute Yul by smoking: though the plaque on the four-storey house shows Yul with a cigarette, lung cancer took his life in 1985.
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Artetazh
Artetazh is DVGTU’s humble modern art showcase (in the second aluminium-siding building). The permanent exhibits have a few intriguing piss-takes at the country’s red past, such as the 12 full commandments painted in Soviet style.
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Church of Christ's Birth
Church of Christ's Birth Among the few churches that survived the Soviet years is the cute, red, blue, and white Church of Christ's Birth, with a kaleidoscopic interior of coloured glass and icons. Two-hour services are held most days.
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Dinamo Park
Dinamo Park brims with sun and shade seekers in good weather; the ponds on the south side are popular swim-and-splash spots, and there are some small rides and a mechanical bull, of course. Located behind the Theatre of Musical Comedy.
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Komsomolskaya pl
Here you'll find the newly reconstructed Orthodox church Khram Uspenya Bozhey Materi, a replica of one destroyed during communist times, and, on the south side of the square, the headquarters of the Amur Steamship Company.
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Old Parliament Building
The striking Old Parliament Building, became the House of Pioneers (Dom Pionerov) in Soviet times. It now houses a souvenir shop called Tainy Remesla. Stop and admire the graceful architecture that survived the civil war.
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Monument to the Fighters for Soviet Power in the Far East
Pl Bortsov Revolutsy has the impressive Monument to the Fighters for Soviet Power in the Far East as its centrepiece. The square, a focal point for performers and protesters of all kinds, hosts a market every Friday.
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Vladivostok Train Station
Vladivostok Train Station, originally built in 1912 and smartly renovated since, is an exotic architectural concoction with bold murals inside. Across the road stands an unusually animated, finger-pointing Lenin.
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No 15
Ul Aleutskaya is lined with once-grand buildings. The house at No 15 (the yellow building next door to the offices of the Far Eastern Shipping Company) was the home of actor Yul Brynner.
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Archaeology Museum
The highlights of the small Archaeology Museum are the reproductions and diagrams of the wide-eyed figures found at the ancient Sikachi-Alyan petroglyphs.
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Freid
Freid is Birobidzhan’s Jewish culture centre. The lively director is often around to talk local history or get you a souvenir yarmulke (skull cap).
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Far Eastern State Research Library
The Far Eastern State Research Library, with its intricate red-and-black brick façade, was built from 1900 to 1902.
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