This Siberian city with a population of 620,000 people is the sixth largest in Russia. It got its name thanks to the Irkut River, which flows into the full-flowing Angara just 65 kilometers from the famous Lake Baikal.

Irkutsk is considered a city of industrialists and students, as well as one of the largest transport hubs on the Trans-Siberian Railway.

The city is just over 350 years old, but an important part of the history of Russia is connected with it. The famous trade route to China ran through Irkutsk. It will be interesting for tourists to visit the oldest Siberian metropolis, especially since the railway gives guests such an opportunity.

  • Irkutsk is rightfully considered the center of wooden architecture; houses here are accustomed to decorate with beautiful carvings — a mixture of styles and techniques turns some quarters of the city into open-air museums.
  • Guests are delighted with the 130th quarter — the famous historical part, it is here that all the most interesting is concentrated (K..Marksa, Sedov, Kozov Street). Enjoy the beauties of architecture — merchant’s mansions, tenement houses, estates, housing of the Decembrists. The buildings date back to the 19th — early 20th century.
  • Many tourists look at the timetable in the direction of Irkutsk and go on a trip to visit the Angara Icebreaker Museum and admire one of the first icebreakers that has “survived” to this day. An important page in the history of Russia is connected with the Angara, which the guide will definitely tell about.
  • You can’t visit Irkutsk and not visit the Museum of the Decembrists. After the events on the Senate Square, all activists were sent to Siberian exile. Well-known Russian figures and their families — the Volkonskys, Trubetskoys, Yushnevskys, Muravyovs and others — were serving their sentences in Irkutsk. The estates of the Decembrists became part of a large museum complex.
  • Irkutsk is associated with the name of Alexander Kolchak, here the legendary Russian admiral was arrested and executed. In 2004, a monument 5 meters high on a 7-meter pedestal was erected in his honor near the Znamensky Monastery.
  • The station «Irkutsk — Passenger» is one of the largest transport hubs of the East Siberian Railway. Communication is established with most major cities in Russia, the CIS countries, Germany, Poland, Mongolia and China.

About 8,000 long-distance and short-range passenger trains pass through Irkutsk every day.