Must see attractions in 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…

Stranded on the wrong side of a thundering roundabout, the 1762 Znamensky Monastery is 1.9km northeast of Skver Kirova. Echoing with mellifluous plainsong…

What does a city boasting some of Siberia’s most impressive original timber architecture do to improve the visitor experience? Yes, that’s right, recreate…

Irkutsk’s second Decembrist house-museum emerged from a recent renovation with English-language information, touchscreens and tinkling background music…

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…

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…

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

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…

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…

Irkutsk’s rapidly ageing Regional Museum occupies a fancy 1880s brick building that formerly housed the Siberian Geographical Society, a club of Victorian…

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…

The grand old art museum has a valuable though poorly lit collection ranging from Mongolian thangkas (Tibetan Buddhist religious paintings) to Russian…

The 1758 baroque Raising of the Cross Church has a fine interior of gilt-edged icons and examples of intricate brickwork in a rounded style that’s unique…

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…

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…

Some 6km southeast of the centre, the 1956 Angara Dam is 2km long. Its construction raised Lake Baikal by up to 1m and caused environmental problems, most…

Originally imported in kit form from Newcastle-upon-Tyne to carry Trans-Siberian Railway passengers across Lake Baikal (the trains went on her bigger…

The gigantic Kazansky Church is a theme-park-esque confection of salmon-pink walls and fluoro turquoise domes topped with gold baubled crosses. Get off…