An Enchanted Point Between Russia’s Two Capitals

RBTH disclaimer: Whereas being a really charming place to go to, quite a few guests have reported that their visits to Vyshny Volochyok have been ruined because of the monumental site visitors jams that may happen right here. A super stopping off level between Russia’s two largest cities, we advocate that you simply select your instances of departure rigorously if touring by automotive.

Courting again to 1471, Vyshny Volochyok is a crucial dot on the map between Moscow and St. Petersburg. Previous to the nineteenth century, the Vyshny Volochyok Waterway linked St. Petersburg with central Russia: Its channels served as cargo traces for all types of provides from meals to development supplies. From the angle of Russian artwork, Vyshny Volochyok was a “place of energy” for famed artists together with Ilya Repin, Isaac Levitan and Arkhip Kuindzhi.

A supply of inspiration for Russian artists

It’s the latter half of the nineteenth century. Ilya Repin has already accomplished his famed canvas, Barge Haulers on the Volga. The artist comes to go to his buddy Kokorev, who lived within the neighborhood of the small service provider city of Vyshny Volochyok on a peninsula shaped by the pinnacle of the Msta River and Lake Mstino. Repin grew very hooked up to this plot of land.

“Is not it the promised land for a panorama painter! It’s the essence of Russia, its soul and its magnificence… It is like a track!” he as soon as wrote.  

The guides of the Educational Dacha Museum exit of their technique to inform me a narrative about Repin dancing on the desk, full of delight upon seeing the surroundings of Vyshny Volochyok.

Such connoisseurs of magnificence as artist Ilya Repin and philanthropist Andrei Kokorev have been the primary to note some great benefits of the Vyshny Volochyok District within the north of the Tver Area, which might later play an vital half within the Russian and world historical past of arts and crafts.

A superb start line for a stroll round Vyshny Volochyok is the primary and the oldest Home of Pictorial Artwork, which has served as a discipline facility for the Union of Russian Artists since 1884. Yearly, college students of artwork academies come right here to study conventional Russian surroundings portray.

Strolling over bridges with heat toes

Vyshny Volochyok has taken pleasure in its waterway for greater than two centuries. Within the 18th century throughout the reign of Peter I, after a prolonged development and reconstruction course of supervised by Dutch and Russian engineers, the Vyshny Volochyok Waterway linked the Volga River with St. Petersburg for the primary time. Right this moment Vyshny Volochyok options about 40 bridges of all sizes, frequented by each locals and vacationers who’ve nicknamed the city the “Venice of the Russian provinces.”

In case you are touring round Russia in late fall or in winter, keep in mind to go to a conventional workshop of handmade items not removed from Vyshny Volochyok’s heart. This workshop produces genuine Russian felt boots referred to as “valenki.” Most individuals put on these boots with out socks, even when the temperature drops to -30 Celsius. The Museum of Russian Valenki Boots, which was launched in 2012 on the event of the workshop’s twentieth anniversary, will let you know all about it. They even say that carrying valenki boots lowers your threat of coronary heart assault and different situations.

Aside from devices and the felting know-how behind this conventional Russian footwear, museum guests are additionally proven the astonishing Tsar Valenok (“The Royal Felt Boot”), measurement 201. It’s 225 centimeters excessive and weighs 52 kilograms and options ornamental felt panels.

With a pair of valenki boots to maintain your toes heat, you may proceed your tour of cathedrals and bridges, and should you strive laborious sufficient you may think that you’re in Venice. Six years in the past, Vyshny Volochyok even teleported to Venice as a part of the Manufacturing facility Russia Challenge, which was offered on the twelfth Venice Structure Biennale in 2010. A corridor devoted to the 100 yr outdated native manufacturing facility Parizhskaya Kommuna (“Paris Commune”) on the native historical past museum is a harbinger of the modifications which might be about to happen as the results of a large-scale reconstruction of the manufacturing facility: The architects plan to construct a residential block, a congress heart and an artwork faculty with an exhibition house and a live performance corridor.