Stories of the city

After the fire of 1763 that began in the archbishop's house (the Traveling Palace stands on its site now) and destroyed the wooden buildings of Tver there began development of the territory of the Kremlin of Tver with stone buildings. The so-called Palace Garden was arranged in front of the façade of the Traveling Palace facing the Volga River.

In the course of development of the center of the city in the 1830s it was united with the Governor's Garden located to the east of the Palace Garden down the Volga River. Finally, in the 1870s the united park included the Public Garden. Since that time, the territory of the Municipal Garden has remained unchanged in general but the trees in it are not direct heirs of the old ones. During the Great Patriotic War the garden was cut down and new trees were planted after the war. Correspondingly, the internal layout of the Municipal Garden was changed radically. The so-called "planks" are its main attraction now. This is a dance floor on which probably the major part of the youth of Tver has been this time or the other, where love alliances and triangles have appeared and where romantic relationships of the parties concerned have been sorted out. The "planks" are associated with numerous legends about brave knights of love, musicians and hooligans of Tver.

The brigade of architects from St. Petersburg headed by Petr Nikitin built a new center of Tver according to a regular plan. Tver became the fourth city in the world with a three-beam layout after Rome, Versailles and St. Petersburg.

The Ekaterinskaya Street (afterwards, Millionnaya, now Sovetskaya) beaded several squares, the most important of them being this, at first Semicircular (according to shape), afterwards, Pochtovaya (Elektrosvyaz occupies one of the buildings still), and since 1919 Sovetskaya. There begin the side beams of the famous three-beam structure of Tver: the Novotorzhskaya Street (formerly Kosaya Novotorzhskaya) goes to the southwest, the Volnogo Novgoroda Street (formerly the Kosaya Novgorodskaya) goes to the northwest to the New Volga Bridge). Like a hand guard on a sword the central street is crossed by the Volodarskogo Street (formerly the Skorbyashchenskaya, according to the temple located on it – All the Mourning Gladness or Skorbyashchensky in Russian).

In the second half of the XVIII century, the buildings of the present-day House of Teachers and House of Science and Technology formed the exquisite parade entrance into the city, moreover so that the Triumphal Arch was placed in the center of the square. According to an order of Paul I who hated everything connected with memory of his mother Catherina II (the Ekaterininskaya Street was renamed into Millionnaya according to his will too), the arch was disassembled.

In the present-day House of Teachers it was planned to locate a drinking establishment initially but the authorities changed their mind and allocated it for a people's school. Afterwards, there was a men's gymnasium and further women's gymnasium there for a long time. Along with this, a tavern was located in the building of the House of Science and Technology after removal of the post office from there. Afterwards, the building was owned by several well-known families of Tver in succession including the Konyaevs who opened a cinema theater in it in 1909.

From the eastern side the Sovetskaya Square is closed by two buildings of the regional administration. The current residence of the Governor was built in the middle of the XIX century by merchant Petr Kobelev for the purpose of lease of separate apartments. At the end of the century, the building became property of the city and soon it was allocated to the Country Council Administration (Zemstvo). It was known that the Tver Country Council was probably the brightest in Russia according to personalities, public actions and economic activity. For instance, due to the efforts of the country council the salary of a startup countryside teacher in Bezhetsk District reached, if counted in terms of current money, 30,000 rubles per month. The regional committee of the Bolshevik Party was located in the building after the October Revolution. The slender dome on the corner of the building appeared at the end of the Great Patriotic War during restoration of the building damages during the hostilities.

In the XVIII—XIX centuries communication between the right-coast (central) and left-coast parts of Tver was organized with assistance of a floating (pontoon) bridge built for the first time, according to a legend, according to a personal order of Peter I. About ten very big barge boats served as the support for this planking. With assistance of 100-kilogram anchors they were anchored across the Volga every spring. The river was noticeably narrower there because it was not exposed to the affluent effect of the Ivankovskoe water reservoir that did not exist then.

This pontoon bridge stretched from the middle of the Municipal Garden, that is from its balustrade, to the present-day Afanasy Nikitin monument. The bridge worked only until the autumn ice formation and during the spring flood both parts of the city turned out to be in complete isolation from each other for some time (like Zatverechye because there was no permanent bridge across the Tmaka River too).

The pontoon bridge was very inconvenient to use, could not bear big cargoes, had a small throughout capacity and required permanent repair. Municipal authorities practically never undertook its maintenance. Maintenance of this bridge was entrusted to private contractors who, correspondingly, charged a quite noticeable fee for the passage.

In the XIX century the topic of the Volga bridge became almost the most pressing problem in Tver because of growth of the city and its population, growth of transit between St. Petersburg and Moscow, appearance of industrial enterprises and increase of the cargo flows.

Finally, in 1895 the treasury agreed to undertake a significant part of expenses on construction of a permanent bridge across the Volga. The rest of the amount was allocated by the French-Belgian company that was building a railway carriage plant in Zavolzhye then and was interested in uninterrupted transportation of materials and products across the river. The type of the metallic bridge that combined technical advantages with the nice look successfully grew widespread in Europe and in Russia at that time. A very well-known and successful counterpart of the bridge in Tver is the Franz Josef Bridge in Budapest.

The bridge across the Volga River built by construction engineer Maschek according to a project of production design engineer Tochisky was opened on September 8 of 1900. The passage through was free of charge to a big joy of residents of the city and municipal authorities and the country council undertook its maintenance.

The bridge was maintained by a locksmith and three keepers, it was illuminated by 48 kerosene lamps, the wooden planking was replaced two times per year. During overhaul of the bridge in the 1980s its driveway was broadened and its proportions were broken. The spans do not look as if hovering in the air unlike in the past. However, thus it was possible to save the bridge from destruction.

The Trekhsvyatskaya Street that was nicknamed the "Arbat of Tver" for its pedestrian nature and saturation with cultural, trading and entertainment institutions was initially one of the most important in the historic look of the city after the fire of 1763 and led to Trekhsvyatskoe village, the countryside residence of the archbishop of Tver that was situated on the current site of the Youth Palace.

At first, the residents of Tver filled the street with buildings in a very original way: houses were built usually in places of intersection of the Trekhsvyatskaya with other streets. By the beginning of the XIX century, houses were built between the angular buildings only in its southernmost part in the area of present-day school No. 12 and shopping center Olimp. In the second half of the XIX century the situation changed radically: one-storied or two-storied stone houses filled the entire street and afterwards it changed on account of enlarging of the new houses when a more solid building appeared on the place of several small ones.

At the beginning of the 1860s, gentleman Petr Klokachev from Zubtsov built a building at the corner of the Trekhsvyatskaya and Kozmodemyanovskaya (named after the St. Unmercenary Kosma and Damian, now it is the Zhelyabova Street) streets to which the famous teachers' school of Pavel Pavlovich Maximovich moved in 1889. The school became the basis of the pedagogical institute, the present-day State Tver University (TvGU). The historic department of TvGU was opened there after overhaul of the building.

On the opposite side of the Zhelyabova Street there is a house that has belonged to certain Pirogov. There was a grocery store there and afterwards a gastronome for a long time that was called Pirogovsky. Interestingly, people called it in this way even in the Soviet time, having preserved the memory about the former owner for entire century.

It is possible to judge about the art and elegance with which some houses have been built in the Trekhsvyatskaya Street by houses 15 and 17 on the western side of the street. They belonged to merchant and honorable citizen of Tver Fedor Nechaev and were built in the 1870s. Elegant decor and original look distinguish them among the old and moreover so new buildings. They almost retained their initial look.

Interestingly, the stone two-storied house at the corner of the Trekhsvyatskaya and Mironositskaya (now this is the Radishcheva Boulevard) streets where Dom I Office and Polina stores are located now has also remained almost in an unchanged form, whereas its age is bigger by an entire century. At the turn of the XVIII and XIX centuries, it was built by Ivan Volkov and belonged to his heirs until the revolution of 1917.

Since the middle of the XIX century, the Trekhsvyatskaya Street (in the Soviet time it was the Uritskogo Street after the name of chair of the Petrograd Emergency Commission) was directed to the Tver railway station that was located at a noticeable distance from the city then. The Prospekt Chaikovskogo that connected the city with the railway station was built only in the Soviet time.

Coasts of rivers and rivers were the main and the only roads in the ancient time. Big rivers became paths for movement of entire peoples and places of their meetings, not always peaceful ones. Through the tributaries people went deeper into forests to unconquered lands and from there they went to other river systems through skid ways. The Russian Plain including its heart, the Valday Elevation, was domesticated in this way.

The city of Tver stood up at both coasts of the Volga River: in the mouth of the big left tributary Tvertsa and in the mouth of the right tributary Tmaka where the Kremlin of Tver was formed thus controlling the movement in all directions. The residents of Tver had a possibility to sail up and down the Volga River, as well as up the Tvertsa River to Novgorod and the Baltic Sea.

The most convenient location of Tver remains its advantage now: the main water, automotive and rail ways of the European part of Russia pass through the city.

Archeologists found out that people choose this place back in the Stone Age. Thus, an ancient encampment was discovered in the mouth of the Tvertsa River near the St. Catherine Church and this finding was dated by the sixth-fourth millenniums BC. During excavations in the mouth of the Tmaka River where the Temple of St. Right-Believing Mikhail Tverskoy stands now archeologists have found items belonging to the early Iron Age, to the beginning of the new era. Ancient settlements of the seventh-sixth millenniums BC near the upper and lower suburbs of Tver – encampments near Dmitrovskoe village (opposite to Migalovo) and near Ienevo village (opposite to Peremerki) – have outstanding importance for science. They are well known in international archeology and are included into international reference books.

Tver has always had its face turned to the Volga and the Volga reflected the beauty of its embankments and perfect buildings.

Volga remains one of the main and most luxurious decorations of our city. It is simply impossible to imagine Tver without the Volga.

River liners with tourists come here through the river, regattas take place there and organization of international aquabike contests have started there in the last few years. Residents of Tver are fond of going on trips along the Volga River in the limits of their native city.

Ivan Ilyich Leonidov is definitely considered a genius of Russian architectural avant-garde all over the world. He is an absolutely unrecognized genius because the stairway in a resort in Kislovodsk and the Kalinin Palace of Pioneers have been the only of his innumerous projects brought into life. However, his ideas were spread all over the world and were later embodied on various continents: in Europe, in North and South America. In Moscow his geometric shapes were accepted directly in the 1960s-1970s: Mikhail Posikhin built the New Arbat from the plate houses invented by Leonidov and Academician Platonov constructed the building of the Presidium of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR in the Leninsky Prospekt using the floridity of the tower endings invented by Leonidov for the unbuilt People's Commissariat of Heavy Machine-Building in the Red Square.

Ivan Ilyich Leonidov was born on December 4 of 1900 at Vlasikha farmstead in Staritsky District of Tver Governorate near Ivanovskoe village, birthplace of hero of the Sevastopol defense Admiral Kornilov. He learned from an icon painter and this circumstance had a reflection on his manner of drafts drawing: they are painted like icons with paints on boards. He was a secretary of the district executive committee in Babino village, afterwards he studied in Moscow, created and worked out numerous unique projects not a single of which was brought into life. Thus, the greatest architect of the XX century Le Corbusier won the tender for the right to design the building of Tsentrosoyuz in the Myasnitskaya Street in Moscow but afterwards he confessed that the project of Leonidov was more interesting and functional.

The overall Leonidov's concept of the preserved so-called old Palace of Pioneers in Tver is teaching by architecture. The corridors had independent names of "Journey around the world" and "Kalinin Region." Their painting was done between 1939 and 1941 by great graphic artist Vladimir Andreevich Favorsky whose fate was closely connected with our region. The drafts, sketches, drawings and even entire panels were preserved in the Favorsky family.

Until recently, it was believed that the building was ruined during the German occupation and a new one was built on this site after the war. Historian of art Tatiana Kuyukina denied this mistake and proved that the long-time publication of Mark Ilyin in Proletarskaya Pravda newspaper that started a series of errors meant destruction of the Empress Catherine Palace in Tver and not the death of the Leonidov's building. German stables were located there during the occupation and after liberation of the city there was our military hospital there. Since 1948, there was the Palace of Pioneers in this building again.

The pre-war panels perished, the silk paintings of Elkonin in Winter Garden and the encrustation decor of the Room of Fairytales made by folk artists died. However, many things survived, were restored and protected from destruction. Along with this, the building being the only embodied masterpiece of the great architect of Tver of the XX century is not under protection of the state.

Heart of an ancient Russian city is its Kremlin, that is a fortified residence of secular and religious power. The Kremlin of Tver was built where the Tmaka River flowed into Volga forming an irregular triangle, two of its sides being coasts of the rivers and the third side went from the present-day balustrade of the Municipal Garden on the Volga coast towards the Sovetskaya Street and further through the Teatralny Passage to the Tverskaya Square and turned to the bridge over the Tmaka River between the building of the circus and the medical academy. The history of the Kremlin and development of its entire huge territory goes back to the depth of the centuries, to the 13th or even 12th century. Both birch bark manuscripts from Tver discovered by the archeologists of Tver in 1983 and 1985 came from this ancient time. The first of them (the end of the 12th century) started from the words "Regards from Stanimir to Mikhal Domazhirovich."

The Kremlin was very densely filled: servicemen, trades people and clergy got settled and monastery yards were located there. Frequent fires incurred irreparable damage and in 1763 fire destroyed the wooden buildings of the Kremlin for the last time, after which Catherine the Great ordered construction of a stone archbishop's house on the burnt down place. It had to become the Traveling Palace for rest of the czar family on the way between St. Petersburg and Moscow simultaneously. In time, apartments of the supreme persons occupied the entire building and Trekhsvyatskoe village, the present-day territory of the Children's Park and Youth Palace in the Darvina Passage, became the residence of the archbishop. A church in the name of Great Martyr Ekaterina was sanctified in the western pavilion of the palace and the eastern pavilion was adjusted to religious consistory. The architectural team from the capital was headed by Petr Nikitin. It included young Matvey Kazakov, the future great Russian architect.

In 1809, the palace accommodated the residence of Tver, Novgorod and Yaroslavl Governor General Prince Georg Oldenburgsky who arrived to Tver with his wife, Great Princess Ekaterina Pavlovna, sister of Emperor Alexander I. It was necessary to make corrections to the look of the palace, which was ordered to famous architect Carl Rossi.

An entrance ramp was attached to the garden façade of the palace that overlooked the Volga. According to a legend, on this ramp Ekaterina rode in a carriage or on a horse right to her suite of rooms on the second floor (the ramp was disassembled in the 1930s).

The Tver Museum was opened in the western wing of the Traveling Palace since 1897. A year later, the palace became the residence of the governors of Tver.

Historian Karamzin, artist Kiprensky, writer Lazhechnikov, poet Fedor Glinka and other leaders of the Russian culture were there in different years. The regional picture gallery is located there now.

The Transfiguration Cathedral built between 1285 and 1290 and radically rebuilt by 1696 was the dominant of the entire ensemble in the Sobornaya Square. Prominent contemporary historian of architecture Alexei Salimov presumed that West Russian architects and probably representatives of other Russian provinces participated in creation of the first cathedral. The Holy Savior Cathedral, the main sanctuary of Tver, was blown up in April of 1935 allegedly according to request of the local residents for whom it was an obstacle for passage through the center of the city. A monument of all-Union elder Mikhail Kalinin was erected near the former southern wall of the cathedral.

A men's classic gymnasium was built opposite to the Sobornaya Square in 1859. Now this is a building of the medical academy.

To the west of the palace (there is Khimik stadium there now) there was the Dvortsovaya Palace (or Parade Ground). At the end of the XIX – beginning of the XX centuries, it was used for accommodation of entertainment institutions (circuses, theaters, zoos). In the 1920s, the parade ground became Dinamo stadium (now it is called Khimik).

This building being currently a part of the ensemble of the Suvorov School was built between 1878 and 1881 by architect Kozlov for the seminary of Tver, religious educational institution opened back in 1739 at the ancient Philip Monastery on the island in the mouth of the Tmaka River. During seasonal floods the island was flooded a little and the seminary was moved to the specifically constructed building in the Kremlin first (there is Khimik stadium there now) and afterwards to the Otroch Monastery in the mouth of the Tvertsa River. Afterwards, the seminary was finally located in Zatmachye.

The seminary was a very original educational institution. Depending on the spirit of time and personality of the rector, some time there was rigid asceticism there and some other time there was obvious influence of the secular life up to literature and theatrical afternoons. Agitated discussions took place in the seminary in the second half of the XVIII century and the first prominent historian of Tver Diomid Karmanov participated in them. The other alumni of the seminary besides him were professor of law Alexander Kunitsyn, admired by Pushkin and his fellow-students in the lyceum, "grandfather of Russian chemistry" Alexander Voskresensky, prominent mechanic and mathematician Ivan Vyshegradsky, famous local historian Vladimir Kolosov, future military leader and publicist Alexander Todorsky etc. Both the program and the methods of education changed frequently and, as a result, the quantity of general and special subjects grew noticeably by the end of the XIX century. The quantity of students grew, which raised the matter of construction of a new building. This is a monumental three-storied building with a semi-basement. The facades are covered with rich brick decor.

After closing of the seminary a school was located there between 1919 and 1941. The Suvorov military school, a counterpart of the former cadet schools, was opened there in 1943. After the war the main façade of the building was overshadowed by a block of apartments.

The new building of the Suvorov school was constructed in 1952 in the style called "Stalin Empire" or neoclassicism. It is solemn, proud and inspires respect and young students of the Suvorov school are justly proud not only for their status but also of the building where they study. There are many well-known names among the alumni of the school. Of course, the best known of them is Army General and Hero of the Soviet Union Boris Vsevolodovich Gromov, commander of our troops during the war in Afghanistan and incumbent governor of Moscow Region.

Gymnasium No. 6 was not always located in this building. Solemn opening of the women's commercial school of Tver took place there on September 8 of 1905. Governor of Tver Sleptsov and Mayor of the City Karpov were present there. This was a general school but girls got commercial education simultaneously. The reason was that commodity science, accounting, jurisprudence and drawing were implemented in the senior grades. More attention than usual was paid to the exact sciences.

The school was established according to initiative of mayor of the city merchant Alexei Fedorovich Karpov. He turned to the government for a permit to issue a bond loan worth 150,000 rubles, the permit was obtained, the bonds were issued, the money was collected and spent on organization of the school. The project of the building of the Marian women's gymnasium rejected due to some reasons became the architectural project of the school.

Girls of all classes and religions were accepted for studying but in reality majority of the pupils consisted of children from wealthy families because payment for education was fairly high.

Almost until the revolution the school was headed by graduate of the St. Petersburg University Roze, progressive and talented pedagogue who used respectful attitude to the child as the personality and attention to all cares and needs of the child as the main principle. About 300 girls completed the course in 13 years of existence of the school. An industrial and economic institute was opened on the basis of the school after the revolution in 1918.

School No. 7 was located afterwards in the beautiful two-storied red-brick building located on the territory of the Kremlin of Tver. Many well-known fellow-countrymen graduated from it including writer Boris Polevoy and poet Andrei Dementyev who were editors-in-chief of the favorite magazine of the Soviet youth Yunost in different times.

Vladimir Yakovlev (incumbent army general and chief of staff of the CIS forces) and Ilya Billig (one of executives of Microsoft company in the US) studied in secondary school No. 6 between 1971 and 1973.