прогулки по Иркутску

Abstract

It is noteworthy that this country develops through two types of events: either through a jubilee or through a catastrophe.

It seems that Irkutsk Airport will be built only after the next crash. At least the interest to this problem returns regularly after sad events, and this occurs almost half a century (a jubilee, too!) – the Council of Ministers decided to relocate the Airport away from the city as long ago as 1962. The Airport does not relate to the topic of this issue, but an attentive reader understands that it is our Carthage, and that the Airport should be relocated. The Romans coped with it faster and more effectively.

Back to Irkutsk’s jubilee, we should say that we will do without blare of trumpets. We will just make an unpretentious walk around the city in its summer 350. Each our route covers new (some of them have been completed by the jubilee) and old buildings, some of them real monuments. All these buildings are integrated into public spaces of different quality and age.

We will also touch on the problems, for old houses, especially the wooden ones often provoke a greedy developer to demolish or to burn them down. Thus a primitive thrift estimates an output of additional square meters. Not to mention how attractive it is to seize public spaces without demolition or without reallocation of the dwellers. Or, rather, the one who is to preserve, to cherish and to improve such houses for the good of the citizens never speaks about this sensitive issue. So we have to do it.

Walking is a no-hurry genre, unlike the preparation for the celebration. Walking around the city you like is a pleasant and cognitive process. It will acquaint the architects with the works of their predecessors and colleagues. We hope that such a walk may be interesting for Irkutsk citizens and visitors, too. Isn’t it interesting to learn “at first hand” the intimate details of the restoration of the Trubetskoys’ estate or of the renewal of the Sukachevs’ garden? Or to see the future view of the site, which is presently full of noise and dust and occupied by lifting cranes and concrete mixers? And if some texts look complicated, never mind, it is our “secret knowledge” inviting inquiring minds devoid of indifference…