Tomsk Wooden Architecture

Tomsk was a wealthy merchant town and then a university city, and it built in timber long after other places had moved to brick, so it kept whole streets of wooden houses from the decades around 1900 - two storeys, on stone bases, with carved window surrounds, fretwork gables, turrets and porches, in a style people call wooden art nouveau where the carving follows the curves of the period. The best known are on Krasnoarmeyskaya: the Dragon House with its carved beasts on the gables, and the Firebird House. Tatarskaya street, in the old Tatar quarter, has a long run of them. Several hundred buildings are formally protected. The problem is condition - these are mostly flats, without money for repair, and fires, rot and quiet demolition have taken many. Restoration has been active recently, including a scheme letting people take on a house cheaply in return for repairing it, so streets now mix the immaculate and the collapsing.

What you actually see

• The Dragon House - carved beasts along the gables on Krasnoarmeyskaya.
• The carved surrounds - fretwork window frames, turrets and porches from around 1900.
• The Tatar quarter - a long run of wooden houses on Tatarskaya street.
• The mixed condition - restored houses standing next to derelict ones.

When to go

May to September. Half a day of walking. Snow makes the carving photograph well but the streets are icy.

Honest expectations

Most houses are private flats, so you look from the pavement only. Many are in bad repair, boarded, or burned out, and the decay is very visible. Signage is sparse. Tomsk is a long way from anywhere and reached mainly through Novosibirsk.

Nearby

Lagerny Sad above the Tom and the university buildings are in the same city.