April 5, 2008
Visiting Nizhny Novgorod and flying in a MIG 31
Russia’s third largest city, Nizhny Novgorod, does not have large numbers of foreign residents like Moscow and St. Petersburg largely due to location and the fact foreigners were not permitted there during the Soviet era. The long absence of foreign influence gives the city a unique Russian character you won’t find in the 2 larger cities.
There are more than six hundred unique historic, architectural, and cultural monuments in the city; that gave grounds to UNESCO to include Nizhny Novgorod in the list of 100 cities of the world which are of great historical and cultural value.
There are about two hundred culture and art institutions of oblast and municipal subordination in Nizhny Novgorod.
Among these institutions there are eight theatres, five concert halls, ninety-seven libraries (with branches), seventeen movie theaters (including five movie theaters for children), twenty-five institutions of children optional education, eight museums (sixteen including branches), and seven parks.
Much of the city downtown is built in the Russian Revival and Stalin Empire styles. The dominating feature of the city skyline is the grand Kremlin (1500-11), with its red-brick towers. After Bolshevik devastation, the only ancient edifice left within the kremlin walls is the tent-like Archangel Cathedral (1624-31), first built in stone in the 13th century.
Other notable landmarks are the two great medieval abbeys. The Pechersky Ascension Monastery features the austere five-domed cathedral (1632) and two rare churches surmounted by tent roofs, dating from the 1640s. The Annunciation monastery, likewise surrounded by strong walls, has another five-domed cathedral (1649) and the Assumption church (1678). The only private house preserved from that epoch formerly belonged to the merchant Pushnikov.
There can be little doubt that the most original and delightful churches in the city were built by the Stroganovs in the nascent Baroque style. Of these, the Virgin’s Nativity Church (1719) graces one of the central streets, whereas the Church of Our Lady of Smolensk (1694-97) survives in the former village of Gordeevka (now, part of the city’s Kanavinsky District), where the Stroganov palace once stood.
Other notable churches include:
- the Saviour Cathedral, also known as the Old Fair Cathedral, a huge domed edifice built at the site of the great fair to an Empire style design by Agustín de Betancourt and Auguste de Montferrand in 1822;
- the so-called New Fair Cathedral, designed in the Russian Revival style and constructed between 1856 and 1880 at the confluence of the Oka and the Volga;
- the recently reconstructed church of the Nativity of John the Precursor (1676-83), standing just below the Kremlin walls; it was used during the Soviet period as an apartment house;
- the parish churches of the Holy Wives (1649) and of Saint Elijah (1656);
- the Assumption Church on St Elijah’s Hill (1672), with five green-tiled domes arranged unorthodoxly on the lofty cross-shaped barrel roof;
- the shrine of the Old Believers at the Bugrovskoe cemetery, erected in the 1910s to a critically acclaimed design by Vladimir Pokrovsky;
- the wooden chapel of the Intercession (1660), transported to Nizhny Novgorod from a rural area.
There is also a mosque in Sennaya Square, where the muslim populations of the city go for Friday prayers, Islamic activities and activities which are organised by the mosque. There is also a small shop to buy halal meats. Most of the muslims in this city are Tatars.
The city has many industrial suburbs, such as Kstovo, Dzerzhinsk, and Bor. The town of Semyonov, to the north of Nizhny Novgorod, is known as a craft center for Khokhloma wood painting. Another suburb, Balakhna, is noted for its medieval architecture.
A singular monument of industrial architecture is a 128-metre-high open-work hyperboloid tower built on the bank of the Oka near Dzerzhinsk as part of a powerline river crossing by the eminent engineer and scientist Vladimir Shukhov in 1929.
Overnight trains provide access to Nizhny Novgorod from Moscow. Since December 2002, a fast train transports passengers between Nizhny Novgorod and Moscow in less than five hours. One can continue from Nizhny Nogorod eastward along the Trans-Siberian Railway, with direct trains to major cities in the Urals and Siberia, as well as to Beijing.
Nizhny Novgorod Strigino Airport has direct flights to major Russian cities, as well as to Frankfurt (Lufthansa flights to the city three times a week). The air base Sormovo was an important military airlift facility, and Pravdinsk air base was an interceptor aircraft base during the Cold War. S7 Airlines goes to Moscow Domodedovo airport daily.
Nizhny Novgorod is an important center of Volga cargo and passenger shipping. In the summer, cruise vessels operate between Nizhny Novgorod, Moscow, Saint Petersburg, and Astrakhan. In 2006 the small number of Meteor-class hydrofoils resumed operations on the Volga river.
Free shuttle buses run from several points in the city to the MEGA shopping complex, which opened in October 2006 in Fedyakovo, a few kilometers to the east of Nizhny Novgorod city line.
Nizhny Novgorod has a great and extraordinary art gallery with more than 12,000 exhibits, an enormous collection of works by Russian artists such as Viktor Vasnetsov, Karl Briullov, Ivan Shishkin, Ivan Kramskoi, Ilya Yefimovich Repin, Isaak Iljitsch Lewitan, Vasily Surikov, Ivan Aivazovsky, there are also greater collections of works by Boris Kustodiev and Nicholas Roerich, not only Russian art is part of the exhibition it include also a vast accumulation of Western European art like works by David Teniers the Younger, Bernardo Bellotto, Lucas Cranach the Elder, Pieter de Grebber, Giuseppe Maria Crespi, Giovanni Battista Piranesi, and lot more.
One of the most unique of Nizhny Novgorod’s attractions for visitors is flying in a state of the art supersonic jet, the MIG 31. This clip offers a glimpse fo the experience.
The historic Russian town of Nizhny is Russia’s third largest city. It’s also the only place in the world where you can arrange a flight in a MiG-29 or MiG-31.
Nizhny Novgorod Aircraft Building Plant Sokol supplies premier military aircraft to more than 30 countries and employs some of the best pilots in the world. They also take the business of providing flights to civilians very seriously. This means they’ll do everything possible to make sure your day at the airbase is an incredible adventure. (Youtube)
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