The title of the post is, of course, too loud. There is very little left of the Russian Empire in today's Yoshkar-Ola. There are about twenty buildings that are of at least some interest. I photographed about half of them - the condition of most of old Yoshkar-Ola is below the bottom, and only at home, studying the material, I realized that the crumbling dusty buildings that I passed by without looking were the local old town.
As an addition, there are some elements of the city, at least simply sending us back to the pre-revolutionary past, a gorgeous mineral lake in the Mari forests and the famous Sheremetyev Palace in Yurino.
The photo shows a former women's monastery school from the late 19th century, which belonged to the Bogoroditse-Sergius Monastery. It is considered the first charitable educational institution for Mari girls. With the abolition of the monastery, the school ceased its activities. Under the Soviets, a technical school, a music school, and an art school were located here at various times. Today it is an Orthodox center.
To the right of the monastery school, a piece of the newly built brick Orthodox center can be seen. I repeat that the new center was not built here by chance, but on the site of the former monastery, of which this school is a fragment.
To be honest, Yoshkar-Ola never had a posh old town. The role of a military town in the forest wilderness, far from all roads, left the city with no posh merchant mansions or noble palaces. Actually, because there were very few of both here. But there were still some nice architectural monuments here. Some of them have already burned down, some were demolished. Some of the surviving buildings, which have the official status of "architectural monuments", are in a deplorable state today, and the eye does not catch on them at all.
In the photo behind the blue fence is the former residential building of the same Bogoroditse-Sergievsky Monastery, late 19th century, across the road from the monastery school. It looks like a barracks:
In the courtyard of the residential building of a 19th century monastery there is a vegetable garden, in the very center of Yoshkar-Ola:
The Ascension Cathedral from 1756, which offers good views from the new part of the city. The church was closed in 1937 and became a brewery. Before the Great Patriotic War, the old bell tower with the city clock was demolished. What we see in the photo is the restored version from 2009, slightly different from the original. It is the oldest surviving church in the city and one of the oldest buildings.
Let's look at the cathedral from another side. Firstly, it is clear that the new center of Yoshkar-Ola is closely adjacent to it. Secondly, on the left in the frame, in front of the cathedral, we see the house of the merchant Pchelin - the oldest civil building in the city. The Pchelins are the most famous and wealthy dynasty of Tsarevokokshaysk merchants. It was with the funds of the merchant Pchelin that the Ascension Cathedral was built next to his estate. For some reason, I did not photograph it separately. By the way, you can see it a little in the previous photo, on the left.
There is a legend surrounding this house that several underground passages lead to it from different sides of the city.
Memorial house-museum of Klyuchnikov-Palantay, composer, founder of Mari professional music. This house, where the composer spent his last years in the 1920s, is located among residential high-rise buildings, a little away from the center. It probably owes its not being torn down to its memorial status. Moreover, judging by the photos online, it has been tidied up in recent years:
The second oldest church in Yoshkar-Ola is the Tikhvin Icon of the Mother of God, built in 1774 in the city cemetery with funds from the merchant S. Vishnyakov. Today, the cemetery is occupied by the Central Park of Culture and Leisure (see Part 2). The church is located in one of its corners:
An outbuilding on the estate of the Tsarevokokshay timber merchant Sokolov, also known as the "zemstvo police chief's building". In the 90s it was in a state of emergency, in the 2000s it was restored. Due to the somewhat careless reconstruction it looks like one of the elements of the Yoshkar-Ola new building. Souvenirs are sold inside:
One of the most striking old buildings in Yoshkar-Ola, the Korepov merchants' house, is still in decent condition. Although it is surrounded on all sides by the new Yoshkar-Ola:
The house of the merchant Bulygin, 1835. The Bulygins, as owners of a distillery, opened a beer hall on the first floor. Apartments were rented out on the second. In 1918, the building was nationalized, and the Military Revolutionary Council was located there. In 1937, mass executions were carried out in the basement of the house, which already belonged to the NKVD. Today, it houses the GULAG Museum.
Across the street from Bulygin's house is the house of another merchant, Naumov, late 19th century. This was once the Market Square, onto which the windows of both merchants looked out.
The house was built in the 1930s for the teachers of the Forestry Institute on the site of the burnt-down house of the timber merchant Selivanov. Initially, it looked completely different, log, in the shape of the letter H. Today it looks more like a barrack:
The Trinity Church, located opposite the newly built Dutch houses, is seemingly a new building, but at the same time it was built on the site of the oldest church in Tsarevokokshaysk. Moreover, at the time of construction, some ruins of the old Trinity Church even remained, so it can be called reconstructed with a stretch. Although the shape and decoration of the temple are completely new and have little to do with the old church.
Well, that's basically all about the interesting buildings of old Yoshkar-Ola. There are 13 photos. In principle, there should have been about the same number of architectural monuments, half of which also look like old barracks, but, as I already said, they do not attract attention, and I simply did not think to photograph them. Now you can look at the objects of Yoshkar-Ola, which at least somehow refer to the past.
On the square opposite the city and republic government, where perhaps the best new building in Yoshkar-Ola is located – an art gallery in the form of a Venetian palace – a monument to Ivan Andreevich Nogotkov-Obolensky has been erected. In fact, the square itself bears his name. He was a Russian military leader sent to suppress the Cheremis (Mari) rebellion. During this process, he arrived in the newly formed Tsarevokokshaysk and became its first governor, for which he is sometimes called the founder of the city. According to some information, Nogotkov-Obolensky soon went missing.
A replica of the Tsar Cannon has been installed next to Nogotkov-Obolensky.
On the embankment of Malaya Kokshaga, against the backdrop of Soviet Yoshkar-Ola, a monument to A.S. Pushkin and Eugene Onegin was erected in 2011. A very original idea, it must be admitted:
It is quite funny that the monument to Pushkin and Onegin is located in the place where Pushkin Street runs into the river and ends. The opposite end of the street, where it begins, is bordered by a park where there is also a monument to Pushkin, only a Soviet one, from the 80s:
In Yoshkar-Ola, we come across some very interesting types of people, unusual for residents of large Russian cities. In addition to the Mari people, who are very different in appearance from other peoples of Russia, and the 90s-style trading grannies, about whom I wrote in the second part, we saw, for example, a short old man with a beard. The old man had a beard like that of peasants in pre-Petrine times. He was dressed in a shabby raincoat and hat. The man seemed to be from another world…
One of the abandoned old houses in the center. I wonder what interested the woman in it?
If the new center of Yoshkar-Ola still causes controversy, although in my opinion it is a definite tourist plus for the city, then the residents of Mari El are definitely lucky with the presence of such a thing as the "Sernur Cheese Factory" in the republic. This enterprise produces simply amazing dairy products, including one of the chips - products made from goat's milk. In Moscow, certain types of their products are quite common, but still, the full range of dairy delights can only be tried in Yoshkar-Ola. You won't even be able to buy in bulk - everything is stored for three days at most.
At the junction of old and Soviet Yoshkar-Ola:
The level of housing and communal services in Yoshkar-Ola varies from perfectly licked courtyards to monstrously filthy and littered ones. Perhaps different management and service companies look after different courtyards, and accordingly their condition is different?
Another detail that took us back to either the 90s or 80s was a snack bar on one of the secondary streets of the city. We went in out of curiosity – there were drunk, flushed men standing at high round tables, the menu included a couple of types of cheap vodka and inedible-looking pies. Apparently, that’s what people eat here…
Fence with national pattern:
Source: travel.ru