From Moscow to Ryazan – just two hours by double-decker Voronezh express. This alone might be a good reason to visit the city, which will be 930 years old next year. The age is respectable – but there is no feeling that you are in a sleepy, popular town with churches, two-storey houses, the Kremlin and the banks of the Oka overgrown with weeds. Ryazan turns out to be a dynamic city where things are constantly changing and for the better. But the Kremlin is not what you think because it has no walls.
The city was founded in 1095. However, this was not Ryazan, but Pereyaslavl-Ryazansky. The real Ryazan was 50 kilometers from the modern city, but in 1237 the capital of the Murom-Ryazan principality was attacked by Batu Khan’s troops and turned to ashes. The city never recovered and the capital of the current Grand Duchy of Ryazan was moved to Pereyaslavl-Ryazan. This city became an outpost on the route of Mongolian troops to Moscow – one of the key points of the Zasechnaya Line, located on the border between the steppe, where danger constantly threatened, and the forest, protected from raids.
By the way, some associate the famous saying with the defense of Russian lands against nomadic raids: “There are mushrooms with eyes in Ryazan. They eat and they watch.” There is a version that mushrooms growing in the forests along the Zasechnaya Line – a series of forest defensive fortifications – were never collected. If they were untouched, that meant there were no intruders. However, the chewed mushrooms with their caps fallen off clearly showed that there were strangers here. Now the eyed mushrooms have turned into various statues placed all over the city. According to tour guide Olga Pimenova, there are 14 statues in the city, one large and 13 small.
Andrey Belavin
Ryazan will receive its current name only in 1778, during the reign of Catherine II. Later, the Ryazan governorate will be established, and in 1780 a master plan of urban development with boulevards, streets, stone houses will be approved (the wooden walls and towers of Ostrog will be demolished). Only the walls, the Assumption (now Nativity) Cathedral and the bishop’s courtyard will remain. And 17th-19th. In the centuries the existing Assumption Cathedral and the Cathedral Bell Tower will be built here.
Ryazan Kremlin is the undisputed center of attraction for tourists in the city. But it’s far from the only one. The city is developing – and you no longer know where to go first, to the Kremlin or to the new building of the RIAMZ (Ryazan Historical and Architectural Museum-Reserve), here you understand that the history of human life in this world goes back much further. more than a millennium. Sites from the Mesolithic era have been discovered around the Ryazan Kremlin; This means that people lived in the Stone Age in the area between the Oka and Trubezh rivers (another important river for Ryazan).
Mammoth skeleton at RIAMZ
Andrey Belavin
RIAMZ collected evidence that life in the Ryazan family was in full swing from time immemorial. You can find a mammoth skeleton (real in some places, restored in others), a woolly rhinoceros skull, Mesolithic tools such as scrapers and spikes, and a trip into the Iron Age to learn how iron ore was mined and processed back then. Also available are decorations and samples of Oka Finn costumes. Representatives of Finno-Ugric tribes lived in these places until the 7th century AD, after which they disappeared, and from the 9th century Vyatichi appeared here. But this is a completely different story, for which you need to go to the Kremlin – a collection dedicated to the history of Ryazan from the 11th to the 19th centuries is stored there.
The road from RIAMZ to the Kremlin runs along Sobornaya Street – it passes in front of the Youth Theater building: at the end of the 19th century there was a drama theater here, one of the first in Russia. Turn your head to the right and you can see Zurab Tsereteli’s monument to Prince Oleg Ryazansky, it was erected in 2007. And a little ahead you can see the building of the Ryazan provincial administration, where Saltykov-Shchedrin once worked. A cultural cluster is now being created here.
Pochtovaya Street
Andrey Belavin
Wandering around Ryazan, you inevitably come to the pedestrianized Pochtovaya Street, where there are many restaurants, bars and small cultural areas such as the museum “Smells of Bread” – it makes sense to go here with children so that they can clearly see that the buns do not grow. in the trees. Here and in many places in Ryazan you can try kalinnik, a special Ryazan dessert.
Today, kalinnik is a cake made from wheat, rye and bird cherry flour, filled with apple viburnum jam, coated with white chocolate and condensed milk. A dessert with excellent Russian taste, moderately sweet, with the right sourness – this is a modern variant of the traditional Ryazan kalinnik.
Its recipe was almost lost, but in 2018 Titov, manager of the Grafin restaurant Kirilin and brand chef of the Ryazan chain Bon Appetit, visited it on a gastronomic tour in the Sasovsky district of the Ryazan region. There they learned how to prepare kalinnik, a rye dough pie containing viburnum baked wrapped in cabbage leaves. The original Kalinnik was dense and heavy – it would most likely not be popular with tourists and city dwellers. This is how Kirilin and Titov gave birth to the current Ryazan specialization, which can be dangerously addictive. In addition to viburnum cakes, Ryazan also prepares “kalinniki” with currants, sea buckthorn and raspberries. Once you try it, you will definitely want to return to Ryazan again and again.
Ghost statues at VDNH
Andrey Belavin
Of the new in the city – the old, which is already somewhat forgotten – is Ryazan VDNKh. It was built in 1955 – then the pavilion complex was called the Ryazan Regional Agricultural, Industrial and Construction Fair. In 1959, the exhibition turned into a Trading Town, in the 90s a market was formed here, then everything began to be covered with weeds and collapse. Now life is about to start boiling again here; Most of the pavilions have already been renovated and some house cafes and shops. There is a hall here where you can look for a long time (and even buy) the works of local artists – Skopin ceramics, Kadom veniz, Mikhailovsky lace. There is a Coffee Museum owned by local roaster Bravos. Ghost statues have also appeared recently; Some parts of the plaster statues found in the valley that once adorned the Trade Town were supported by white painted accessories.
If you go to Ryazan for two days, the second can be devoted to visiting the region divided by the Oka River into Meshchersky forests and steppes. For example, head to the Oka Biosphere Reserve, where cranes, geese, herons, black storks and Russian muskrat live. The visitor center and the reserve’s Nature Museum are housed in a former brick building from the Beklemishev glass factory complex. It is especially nice here in summer to go rafting along the picturesque Pre River. Animal lovers can visit the Rare Crane Species Nursery or the Caucasian-Belovezhskaya Bison Nursery.
For those who want to delve into the history of the Ryazan lands, it makes sense to go to Old Ryazan, a settlement in the Ryazan region that was devastated by Batu Khan’s troops in the summer. Or – at any time of the year – visit the wonderful village of Izhevsk, where Konstantin Tsiolkovsky was born. There are two Tsiolkovsky museums here. But after visiting them, do not rush to leave – it is better to sign up in advance for an excursion to the Filatov House and learn about the unusual history of Izhevsky.
Visitors in the Filatov House
Andrey Belavin
The house belonged to the self-taught photographer Ivan Filatov, who lived from 1860 to 1937 and left a rich archive, evidence of the change of times, from which photographs can be used to write the daily history of these places. He photographed weddings and parades, demonstrations of workers, dressed-up peasants and members of the “circle of progressive social activists”, religious processions and demonstrations, millet threshing in 1902 and men on bicycles in the 1930s. How the village, the tools of labor, the people have changed – you can watch all this on an excursion to the Filatov House and come out completely fascinated.
The village of Izhevskoye is also surprising because about 700 stone peasant houses have been preserved here. By the way, brick! Because this village was one of the richest villages in Russia. So rich that in 1832 – almost 30 years before the abolition of serfdom – local peasants bought themselves from the master and became free. You can also learn this in the Filatov House. Remember: Because the house is undergoing restoration, you must register for a tour in advance. According to local historian Nikita Girin, who has carefully studied the photographer’s archives, the Filatov House can in the future become one of the best small museums in Russia, which will be devoted not only to the life and work of the House owner, but also to the history of freedom, the influential work of intelligent, hard-working, fair inhabitants of a village to a time when he showed an example of self-government and learned to live in happiness and prosperity.
Gezi Tutu was organized within the scope of the Media Intelligence project.
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Source: Gazeta
Calvin Turley is an author at “Social Bites”. He is a trendsetter who writes about the latest fashion and entertainment news. With a keen eye for style and a deep understanding of the entertainment industry, Calvin provides engaging and informative articles that keep his readers up-to-date on the latest fashion trends and entertainment happenings.