The most detailed guide around Circum-Baikal Railroad: Irkutsk, Listvyanka, Slyudyanka, Shelekhov. A. D. Katashevtsev
here, the line of the monastery wall turned at a steep angle to the Angara, where at the modern railway line going to Irkutskdrevosnab (near the modern house at 46 Bereg Angary Street), it returned to the Assumption Church. In this part of the monastery there was a parish cemetery and a cave dug in the river bank.
The founder of the monastery, the Righteous Elder Gerasim, dug this hole for himself in 17th century, and Saint Innocent loved to pray here afterwards. During the arrangement of a new stone inclosure in 1802 were discovered the imperishable body of an old man, his coffin, staff and gravestone. In memory of this, a two-story chapel was erected right in the wall, where, in addition to the named shrines, there was a monastery archive.
Chapel of Righteous Elder Gerasim, 1914
From this point, along the line to the apse of the Ascension Cathedral, there was another chapel, installed in 1865 at the resting place of the relics of the first archimandrite of the monastery – Venerable Sinesius (Ivanov). It should be noted that many famous Irkutsk residents of Trapeznikovs, Mylnikovs and Bazanovs families were buried at the parish cemetery. In 1939, a now abandoned kindergarten with a laundry room and a vegetable store was built in its place (Polyarnaya Str., 96).
Chapel of the Venerable Sinesius (Ivanov), 1914
After getting acquainted with the former monastery territory, we reached the Innokentievsky bridge, built in 1978 and named after the first Irkutsk saint – Innocent Kulchitsky. The name is not accidental, because next to the bridge since December 8, 1731 and until January 11, 1921 were his relics.
From here we will move along the «Ryolka» (an elongated elevated dry place in a damp forest or swamp) further along Angara bank to the mouth of Irkut River. Initially, there were monastic mowings, along which the Moskovsky tract (now Polyarnaya Street) wound among the fields, going to the ferry on the island of Love (today Komsomolsky). From 1857 until 1891 this was the only way to get into the city. Taking into account the violent nature of the Angara, which liked to freeze on Christmas in severe frosts and open only in April, this created a lot of difficulties for travelers (since 1952, the river does not freeze within the city limits). On the ferry, queues up to a mile long were formed. The problem was finally solved only with the creation of reinforced concrete bridges across the Angara (1936) and Irkut (1961).
Moscow tract at the entrance to Irkutsk, 1866
In this swampy area in the summer of 1905, 22 consolidated hospitals were laid for the treatment of sick and wounded lower ranks who arrived from the battlefields of the Russo-Japanese War. Soon, the military town that arose here began to acquire houses of railway workers, and in 1907, at the behest of the Governor-General I.P. Mollerius, a new suburb was created under the name «Voznesenskoye».
Zairkutniy military town, 1916
Soon, Zairkutniy military town was created on its base, which, starting from the autumn of 1914, became a refuge for hundreds of Austrian, Slovak, Italian and Hungarian prisoners of the First World War. Among the numerous buildings, only the 170th consolidated hospital (Traktovaya Str., 14Б), and the several barracks (Kamskaya Str., 8—14) remained, as well as reclamation canals, which were intended for the flow of surface and ground water. After the revolution, the village was named after G.V. Zinoviev, and in 1935 received its modern name – S.M. Kirov.
Hospital in Zairkutny military town, 1916
We are crossing the river along the Irkutny bridge. From it, on the right side, you can clearly see the railway bridge built in 1907, as well as the ruins of the pillars of the old wooden bridge, erected in tandem with the pontoon crossing in 1891. On the left hand, we see the watercourse of Irkut, dotted with the islands. In the middle of one of them stands a white cross. According to legend, it was here, a year after the founding of Yeniseisk, in 1620, the chieftan Berezovsky and the boyar’s son Petrushka Talshin founded the first Irkutsk winter hut. Subsequently, it was recreated in 1652 and 1656.
Cross on Dyachiy Island
However, the constant floods of Irkut, coupled with the swamps of the river and the narrow of Kaya Mountain, forced the Cossacks to move the settlement to the right bank of Angara River. July 16, 1661 the boyar’s son Y.I. Pokhabov, at the request of the local Yandash prince Zayanda Dorogy, founded a wooden fortress («ostrog») there, from which the steady development of Irkutsk began. Until the flood of 1971, the remains of foundation logs, deep channels and meter-long stumps, preserved from the time of the first Cossacks, were visible on the island.
Irkutsk fortress (ostrog) in 1692
Glazkovo Microdistrict
From the bridge over the Irkut, we enter the Kaya Mountain, which glorified the city to the whole world with the discovery of the Glazkovo necropolis – the largest ancient burial ground on the territory of the modern metropolis. On the whole territory of Eastern, Western Siberia and the Far East taken together, as many burials of the Stone Age were found as at the area of Lokomotiv stadium in Irkutsk. Moreover, this is only 2% of the total number of finds in Glazkovo, many of which are the most valuable artifacts that adorn collections of many museums in Siberia and central Russia.
Artifacts of the Glazkovo necropolis
We will continue moving along Botkin street. Here, at the turn of the road on the right, you can see the building of an old hospital (Botkin Str., 4В), which is the only one preserved from the huge complex of the resettlement center of the Eastern Part of the Siberian Railway, built in 1906 for the needs of landless peasants coming from European Russia to live in Siberia and on the Far East. In this building since 1912 as local doctor worked M.P. Gerasimov in in whose family was born the famous scientist M.M. Gerasimov. Even at the age of 9, little Misha collected strange stones in the vicinity of his house and brought them to the local history museum, where he showed them to the Swiss archaeologist B.E. Petri. In 2007, during the construction of a new building (Dzhambul Str., 30), a 36,000-year-old site was opened, traces of which were found in 1924 by a young archaeologist. A few thousand items as unique pendants made of talc, articles made of rhinoceros and mammoth bones and tools of labor were found.
Archaeologist B.E. Petri (1884—1937)
The career of a professional archaeologist M.M. Gerasimov began in 1928 by conducting excavations right in next to his house at the Cyclodrom park, opened in 1891 for the first cycling races in Irkutsk. Today, this territory bears the name of the Paris Commune, and part of it is occupied by Lokomotiv railroad stadium, built in 1954. This is certainly an iconic place for Irkutsk. Since 1984, the ancient burial grounds have been preserved here under special asphalt caps for the creation in 2023 the first mankind history museum in Russia.
Archaeologist M.M. Gerasimov (1907—1970)
Opposite the stadium, in a five-story building, there is the Siberian Federal Scientific Center for Agrobiotechnologies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, since 1979 it has been subordinate to research institutes, breeding and experimental stations operating throughout Siberia (Botkina Str., 4). Its neighbor is the Irkutsk Interregional