Library Bar

Irkutsk


Russian literary celebrities stare at you from every wall, so after a few pints of Smolensk craft beer or a selection of great cocktails, you might be treating Mayakovsky as your buddy. But you can find better company than dead poets as the place is located next to three popular hostels, so English-speaking travellers are in no short supply.


Lonely Planet's must-see attractions

Nearby Irkutsk attractions

1. City History Museum

0.23 MILES

Despite its palatial 19th-century home (built by wealthy merchant Sibiryakov in 1884), what should be Irkutsk's main repository of the past is in fact a…

2. Trubetskoy House-Museum

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3. Bronshteyn Gallery

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A large and sparkling new modern-art venue that most prominently features a collection of Dashi Namdakov’s sculptures inspired by Buddhist prayer dolls…

4. Bogoyavlensky Cathedral

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This fairytale ensemble of mini onion domes atop restored salmon, white and green towers first appeared on the Irkutsk skyline in 1718, but during the…

5. Sculpture Gallery

0.5 MILES

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…

6. Saviour’s Church

0.51 MILES

Constructed in 1706, this is the oldest stone-built church in Eastern Siberia and has remnants of the original murals on its facade. Until the late 1990s…

7. Volkonsky House-Museum

0.53 MILES

The duck-egg-blue and white home of Decembrist Count Sergei Volkonsky, whose wife Maria Volkonskaya cuts the main figure in Christine Sutherland’s…

8. Museum of City Life

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This small museum filling six rooms of a former merchant’s house illustrates just why 19th-century Irkutsk was nicknamed the ‘Paris of Siberia’. Changing…