Sights in Siberia
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Stolby Nature Reserve
Arguably Krasnoyarsk's greatest attractions are the spiky volcanic rock pillars called stolby. These litter the woods in the 17,000-hectare Stolby Nature Reserve south of the Yenisey River. To reach the main concentration of pillars, start by walking 7km down a track near Turbaza Yenisey. Alternatively, there is much easier access via a long chair lift from beside Kafe Bobrovyylog (ul Sibirskaya).
This usually runs year-round on request, but was closed throughout 2005 during a massive ski-slope redevelopment. From the top of the chair lift, walk for two minutes to a great viewpoint or around 40 minutes to reach the impressive Takmak Stolby. Infected ticks are dangerous be…
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Regional Museum
The Regional Museum is one of Siberia’s best. Its wonderfully incongruous 1912 building combines art nouveau and Egyptian temple-style features. Arranged around a Cossack explorer’s ship are models, icons, historical room interiors and nature rooms where you can listen to local birdsong and animal cries. The basement hosts a splendid ethnographic section comparing the historical fashion sense of shamans from various tribal groups. The gift shop sells old coins, medals, postcards and excellent maps.
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Historical Museum
The Historical Museum charges per single-room floor. The best is Buddiyskoe Iskustvo (3rd floor), displaying thangka, Buddhas and icons salvaged from Buryatiya's monasteries before their Soviet destruction. Note-sheets in English fail to explain the fascinating, gaudy papier-mâché models of Khvashan's eight unruly sons urinating at one another.
Note the Gungarba shrine table (every Buryat home once had one), the Atsagat medical charts (Tibetan medicine was apparently standard here until the 1940s) and the walnut necklace on grey, clown-faced Sagan Obugen (walnuts were exotic in Buryatiya). The less-interesting 2nd floor traces Buryat history in maps, documents and artef…
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Ethnographic Museum
In a forest clearing 6km from central Ulan-Ude is the worthwhile Ethnographic Museum, an outdoor collection of local architecture plus some reconstructed burial mounds and the odd stone totem. Although lacking the pretty lakeside setting of equivalents in Bratsk and Irkutsk, it features occasional craft demonstrations, has a splendid wooden church and sports a whole strip of Old Believers’ homesteads. Marshrutka 8 from pl Sovetov passes within 1km and upon request will detour to drop you at the door for no extra charge.
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Datsans
En route to the Ethnographic Museum, you'll notice Ulan-Ude's attractive new pair of datsans backed by stupas and trees that flutter with prayer flags; there are services from 09:00 to 11:00 most mornings. The nearby hippodrome is the venue for major Buryat festivals, including the Buryatiya Folk Festival, which features horse riding, wrestling and other folky delights.
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Chasovnya
For great city views climb Karaulnaya Hill to the pointy little Chasovnya which features on the Russian 10-rouble banknote. At midday there’s a deafening one-gun salute here.
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Lenin Head
At one end of ul Lenina the main square, pl Sovetov, is awesomely dominated by the world's largest Lenin head, which looks less domineering than comically cross-eyed.
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Kolchak's Statue
The reverberations of Russia's 1917 revolution are full of scarcely believable tales. Few top the incredible journey of the tsar's national gold reserve. With Communist forces closing in, royalists somehow managed to use barges and special trains to scurry east with over 1300 tons of gold, plus silver, platinum and millions of roubles in banknotes. When the retreat reached Omsk, the hoard fell into the hands of Admiral Kolchak.
A former national hero for his Arctic explorations, Kolchak was then a minister in Omsk's anti-Lenin coalition. The captured cash allowed him to launch a coup ousting socialist-moderates. Even more money poured in as 'aid' from vehemently anti-Bols…
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Resurrection Hill
When founded in 1604, Tomsk's original fortress sat atop Resurrection Hill. For the city's 400th anniversary, an impressive replica of its 'Golden Gate' was rebuilt in wood complete with domed central tower. Beside it, the well-presented but sparse Tomsk History Museum has resprouted its wooden lookout tower: try to spot the seven historic churches from the top.
Olde-worlde charm continues up cobbled ul Bakunina (named for a 19th-century anarchist) past the Italianate 1833 Catholic Church and on towards the Voznesenskaya Church. This Gothic edifice with five gold-tipped black spires has great potential as a Dracula movie set. A truly massive bell hangs from its new lurid-…
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Ploshchad Lenina
Central pl Lenina isn't really a square so much as a jumbled collection of beautifully restored historic buildings interspersed with banal Soviet concrete lumps. The frustrated Lenin statue, now relegated to a traffic circle, points at the ugly concrete of Tomsk Drama Theatre apparently demanding 'build more like that one'. Fortunately, nobody's listening. The theatre is flanked instead by the splendid 1784 Epiphany Cathedral, the former trading arches and the elegant 1802 Magistrat Hotel.
Topped with a golden angel, in a second circle beside Lenin, is the recently rebuilt Iverskaya Chapel whose celebrated icon is dubbed 'Tomsk's Spiritual Gateway'. The 1000 Melochey Shop…
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Sayano-Shushenskaya Dam
The vastly more impressive Sayano- Shushenskaya Dam, Russia’s biggest and the world’s fourth in terms of energy production, is 15km further south. Privatised in 1993, it cunningly survived a recent renationalisation battle with the Khakassian government by nominally ‘relocating’ itself in Krasnoyarsk territory. No physical move was needed as the dam straddles the provincial border. To join by-appointment Russian-language tours of the dam’s turbine rooms you’ll need copies of your passport, visa and registration plus an invitation letter arranged by a local hotel or Sayanogorsk agency. Expect to wait around three days for permission to come through.
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Volkonsky House-Museum
A short walk behind the pretty pink Preobrazheniya Gospodnya Church then through big heavy gates is the Volkonsky House-Museum. It’s the preserved home of Decembrist Count Sergei Volkonsky, whose wife Maria Volkonskaya cuts the main figure in Christine Sutherland’s book The Princess of Siberia. The mansion is set in a courtyard with stables, barn and servant quarters (beware of the dog). Downstairs is an (over-) renovated piano room; upstairs is a photo exhibition including portraits of Maria and other 1820s women who romantically followed their husbands and lovers into exile. Labels are only in Russian but a R70 English-language pamphlet tells the stories.
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Wooden Architecture
Tomsk's greatest attraction is its 'wooden-lace' architecture - the carved windows and tracery on old log and timber houses. The city combines endless examples of these fine wooden mansions, some grand century-old commercial buildings and a dynamic, modern outlook. The most notable concentration of the wooden lace architecture is along ul Tatarskaya, accessed via steps beside the lovely old house at pr Lenina 56.
Several lesser examples line per Kononova, including number 2 where communist mastermind Kirov lodged in 1905. Close by (but hazardous to reach from per Kononova across a slippery pipe) is the splendid, recently restored Shishkov House. There's even a wooden-lace…
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Znamensky Monastery
Set in a leafy garden behind a noisy traffic circle, the 1762 Znamensky Monastery is 1.5km northeast of the Bogoyavlensky Cathedral. Echoing with mellifluous plainsong, the interior has splendidly muralled vaulting, a towering iconostasis and a gold sarcophagus holding the miraculous relics of Siberian missionary St Inokent.
Celebrity graves outside include that of Grigory Shelekhov, the man who claimed Alaska for Russia. White-Russian commander Admiral Kolchak was executed by Bolsheviks near the spot where his statue was controversially erected in November 2004 at the entrance to the monastery grounds, on a plinth that's exaggeratedly high enough to reduce vandalism.
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Taltsy
About 47km east of Irkutsk, 23km before Listvyanka, Taltsy is an impressive outdoor collection of old Siberian buildings set in a delightful riverside forest. Amid the renovated farmsteads are two chapels, a church, a watermill, some Evenki graves and the eye-catching 17th-century Iliminsk Ostrog watchtower. Listvyanka–Irkutsk buses and marshrutky stop on request at Taltsy’s entrance (look out for the roadside ‘ Музей’ sign), and the ticket booth is a minute’s walk through the forest.
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Military Museum
The dry, Russian-language-only Military Museum is only for those with a passion for Eastern Siberia’s military history, though it does contain some semi-interesting exhibits on Beketov’s Cossacks, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and communist repressions. Each of the six floors bristles with weapons, and the museum’s collection of tanks and artillery can be seen by walking up the passage between the museum and the impressive Officers’ Club building next door.
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Trinity Monastery
Riverside Trinity Monastery is undoubtedly Tyumen’s most appealing architectural complex. Its kremlin-style crenellated outer wall is pierced by a single gate-tower. Behind, black and gold domes top the striking 1727 Peter & Paul Church.Its soaring interior is emphasised by a giant, seven-level candelabra and decorated with murals. Backlit at sunset, the monastery domes glow majestically. It’s even more photogenic seen across the ferric-brown river from tree-lined ul Bergovaya.
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Oppression Museum
The gloomy 1898 brick building is supposedly a haunted former school. Closed following the murder of a pupil, it later became the prison for the cruel NKVD (proto-KGB). The building’s eerie dungeon is now a memorable Oppression Museum. Tours are recommended but are only in Russian. Failing that you can just wander round yourself. Look out for the stunning Gulag map, the system of Soviet labour camps depicted as an uncountable mass of red dots across the territory of the former USSR.
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Art Museum
The Art Museum displays a lot of fussy decorative arts but the rectilinear 1862 building is a historical curiosity in itself. It was built as the Siberian governor’s mansion and hosted passing tsars: note the original Kalmykian throne with its ebony elephant armrests and 7kg of beaten silver. In 1918–19, however, the building was home to Admiral Kolchak’s counter-revolutionary government and was the heart of White Russia before the Reds eventually claimed the city.
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Tomsk University
The classically colonnaded main buildings of the Tomsk University lie in resplendently leafy grounds, giving Tomsk the soubriquet 'Oxford of Siberia'. Tomsk is one of the most enjoyable cities in Siberia and has flourished in recent times as a university city and now has half a dozen major academic establishments hence the youthful, intellectual atmosphere during term time. Tucked away in unmarked rooms, Tomsk University hosts several quietly intriguing museums covering zoology and ethnography.
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FSB Headquarters
The FSB headquarters is worth a peek. The bearded dude in the courtyard is Felix Dzerzhinsky, the founder of the Cheka, forerunners to the KGB and the current day FSB. A much larger monument to Iron Felix was torn down in Moscow as the USSR collapsed in 1991, and he is a very uncommon face indeed in modern Russia. Be sure to check out the large Soviet-era ‘Workers Unite!’ mural to Felix’s left. Taking photos of the FSB HQ is not advised.
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Angara Steamship
Moored near the Angara Dam, the Angara Steamship is an ice-breaker ferry originally imported in kit form from England to carry Trans-Siberian Railway passengers across Lake Baikal (the trains went on her bigger sister ship Baikal, which sank years ago). Officially closed to visitors, the ship is currently used as drinks storage for a nearby summer café, but the impressive engines still work, as you might see, should the café owner decide to befriend you.
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Regional Museum
Leaving the park, directly opposite, on your left at the corner of Pionersky pr building no 24, the 80-year-old Regional Museum concentrates mostly on mining and steel industries, but also contains locally found mammoth remains and exhibits dedicated to the native Shortsi people, who dominated the area before the arrival of the Russians. The two cannons outside the museum date from the 17th century, a fact that many locals are disproportionately proud of.
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centre-of-Asia monument
If you take a map of Europe, cut out Asia and balance the continent on a pin, the pinprick will be Kyzyl. Well, only if you've used the utterly obscure Gall's stereographic projection. However, that doesn't stop the town perpetuating the 'Centre of Asia' idea first posited by a mysterious 19th-century English eccentric and still marked with a concrete globe-and-obelisk centre-of-Asia monument on the riverbank, at the end of Komsomolskaya ul.
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Angaram Ice-Breaker
Some 6km southeast of the centre, the 1956 Angara Dam is 2km long. Moored nearby, the Angara Ice-breaker was originally imported in kit form from Newcastle-upon-Tyne to carry Trans-Siberian Railway passengers across Lake Baikal (the trains went on her bigger sister ship Baikal, which sank years ago). The steamer is now a less-than-inspiring museum reached by a permanent gangway.
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