Krasnoyarsk is a city and the administrative center of Krasnoyarsk Krai, Russia, located on the Yenisei River. It is the third largest city in Siberia after Novosibirsk and Omsk, with a population of 1,035,000. Krasnoyarsk is an important junction of the Trans-Siberian Railway and one of Russia’s largest producers of aluminium. The city is notable for its nature landscapes; author Anton Chekhov judged Krasnoyarsk to be the most beautiful city in Siberia.
There are a number of historical buildings in Krasnoyarsk, the oldest of them being the Intercession Cathedral (1785 to 1795, restored in 1977 to 1978). Other locally significant samples of Russian Orthodox architecture are the Annunciation Cathedral (1802–12), the Holy Trinity Cathedral (1802–12), John the Baptist Church (Russian: ??????? ?????? ????????, 1899, former episcopal residence), and the new Michael the Archangel Church (1998 to 2003). On the top of the Karaulnaya Hill, originally a pagan shrine, later occupied by the Krasnoyarsk fort watchtower, the Paraskeva Pyatnitsa Chapel (1804, rebuilt 1854-55) still stands. The chapel, displayed on the 10-ruble note, is one of the iconic images of the city. The chapel was abandoned and fell into disrepair during the Soviet era and only when Perestroyka came was it regained by the Yenisei bishopric.
A bridge near Krasnoyarsk carries the Trans-Siberian Railway across the Yenisei. This structure, one of the longest at the time, was constructed between 1893 and 1896 to an award-winning design by Lavr Proskuryakov. When approved for the inscription on the World Heritage List in 2003, the bridge was described by the UNESCO as “an early representation of a typical parabolic polygonal truss bridge in Russia” which became “a testing ground for the application of engineering theories and the development of new innovative solutions, which had numerous successors”
Among other notable buildings are the mansions of the merchant Nikolay Gadalov (beginning of the 20th century), the Roman Catholic Transfiguration Chapel (1911, also known as the Krasnoyarsk Organ Hall), the Krasnoyarsk Krai Museum stylized as an Ancient Egyptian temple, the Krasnoyarsk Cultural/Historical Center and the triumphal arch at the Spit, the regional administration building flanked with two towers known as the “Donkey Ears”. There are a number of two-story wooden houses in the city built mostly in the middle of the 20th century as temporary habitations. Many urbanized villages located inside the city keep the remnants of the traditional Russian village architecture: wooden houses with backyards, many somewhat dilapidated now but still inhabited.
