Day 12 : Irkutsk

It’s time to say farewell to Listvyanka. A truly enjoyable stay!

We head back to Irkutsk, past the ‘Angara’ ship originally used to carry passengers across the lake and now a museum (its companion ‘the Baikal’ fell victim to the Russian civil war and ended its days at the bottom of Lake Baikal).

We arrive at the Angara hotel on one of the main squares of Irkutsk, Kirova Square. The hotel is a reasonably good 3 star in an 8 floor building with very long corridors. I suspect that in Soviet days it was probably the local equivalent of the Rossyia hotel in Moscow, a state-owned ‘monolith’. My suspicions are confirmed as, in walking round the building, we see that the back of it is a bare cement block with windows… They’ve given it a good facelift at the frontJ

Irkutsk, the ‘Paris’ of Eastern Siberia, was founded in 1661 as a small Cossack garrison. It soon became a key trading centre, sending fur to China and Tibet in exchange for silk and tea. In time it grew, particularly during the ‘gold rush’ of the 19^thcentury, as did its population of merchants and Russians from the West looking for a better future, as well as exiles and ex-convicts. The ‘new rich’ spent a lot of money on education, lavish houses and clothes. It became the cultural and financial centre of Eastern Siberia.

This affluent town was one of the main bases of the White Russians until the Soviets took over and killed Admiral Kolchak, the head of the White Russians, in Irkutsk in 1920.

Admiral Kolchak

His imposing statue ‘guards’ the entrance to the beautiful Znamensky Monastery. Its interior is dominated by an impressive iconostasis and vaulted ceiling. The monastery holds the remains of Saint Inokent in a golden sarcophagus visited by the faithful. On the monastery grounds we also find the tombs of Gregory Shelekov, who discovered and founded a Russian colony in Alaska in 1784, and Yekaterina Trubetskaya, who did a lot for the cultural development of Irkutsk. More about her later…

Resting Place of the Discoverer of Alaska

It was a little irritating initially, but funny looking at it after the event, that on asking the hotel receptionist to call a taxi to take us to the monastery, she sent us to a monastery with garish Disney Land-like blue and white cupolas and a quite bland interior. I wondered whether we’d ended up in the wrong place. On closer scrutiny the absence of the tombs and Kolchak’s statue confirmed my suspicions. The real Znamensky monastery was definitely worth a visit.

Znamensky Monastery

We spend the rest of the day perusing this interesting city.

We visit the impressive Bogoyavlensky Cathedral/Church of the Epiphany with its low vaulted ceilings covered in Byzantine style pictures of aureoled saints and with a highly ornate iconostasis. The exterior and its multi-coloured painted domes are just as fascinating.

Angara River

Bogoyavenskly Cathedral / Church of the Epiphany

Across the road we find the oldest church in Irkutsk, the Church of Our Saviour, a white-washed simple structure with some beautiful external frescoes.

Church of Our Saviour

Architecturally Irkutsk is a real hodge podge of styles. Old, quaint timber lace houses with colourful windows in various states of disrepair (some on the verge of collapsing – a real pity…) share the street with majestic 19^thcentury mansions, depressing Soviet style apartment blocks and spanking new commercial buildings.

Last time I saw such a mix was in rural towns in Eastern Germany in the mid-90s. Only that in Eastern Germany the old and the new were in different areas of town, unlike Irkutsk… A real medley of 19^thand 20^thcentury designs…

Merchant Joshua Feinberg's Mansion

A Discarded Reminder of the Soviet Era

Houses and People of Irkutsk

We stop at the local synagogue. Irkutsk had a flourishing Jewish community, as many Jews started settling in the city in the 19^thcentury, but given the oppression under the Soviets and the opportunity to leave Russia in the early 90s, many settled in Israel.

Irkutsk Synagogue

Irkutsk is also well-known for having become the home of many exiled Decembrists. To learn more about the Decembrist coup, its consequences and the role played by the noblemen and women involved in it, we stop by the Trubetskoy House-Museum, a beautiful wooden house, which was home to the leader of the Decembrists Sergey Trubetskoy and his French wife Ekaterina. They settled here in exile, following years of forced labour and imprisonment in Eastern Siberia. The couple and their fellow Decembrists contributed significantly to the social, cultural and educational development of Irkutsk.

The Decembrist revolt took place in December 1825, led by Russian noblemen and officers opposed to the assumption of the throne by Nicholas I. The latter quickly suppressed the uprising and condemned the leaders of the revolt to imprisonment in Siberian labour camps.

Trubetskoy House-Museum

It’s been a long day… We walk down Karl Marx Street, into the commercial culinary centre of Irkutsk, 130 Kvartal (whose entrance is guarded by the cat-like Babr statue) and have dinner at a Russian, Mongolian, Chinese fusion restaurant called Bar Kamchatka. Delicious and the best wine I’ve had since arriving in RussiaJ

Babr

A last 10pm stop along the waterfront to see the statue of Alexander III, the father of Russia’s initial wave of industrialisation, who decided the Trans-Siberian Railway needed to be built to help realise this vision. The statue was removed by the Soviets, but returned to its original home in recent years.

Classical Architecture in Irkutsk