Architecture of Omsk

About three centuries have passed since those gone events when the troop of Lieutenant-colonel of Life Guards Preobrazhebsky regiment (= полк) Ivan Bukholts landed at the mouth of the Om River and built two small palisaded redoubts. That gave a start of this Siberian town.

Omsk has its real individual and inimitable worth which is based, first of all, on the fortunate choice of the site for a new fortress at the confluence of the quiet River of Om and the powerful Irtysh River in 1716. A number of constructions erected in different epochs but in concord with it also adds to the originality of the city. Some of the buildings are rightly considered as monuments of architecture.

The panorama of Omsk is stylistically varied: it is the fortress where the earliest examples can be found. Who might even imagine a pattern in Baroque to exist in Omsk?! But to be true, this pattern is impretentious (= непретенциозная) being not a palace but a building for its particular military purpose kept till nowadays.

The austere style of Classicism came up to take the place of the elaborate style in Baroque. And the building of the Siberian Cadet Military College proves it. One can find its form of design stylistically repeated in the Nikolsky Cathedral built in accordance with the drawings of the outstanding Russian architect Vasili Stasov.

The Cathedral of the Exhalation of the Cross (Crossvozdvizhensky) situated in Tarskaya Street exists already 130 years. The edifice (= здание) signifies a great interest of the architects of the second half of the 19^th Century to historical styles. The silhouette of the domes and church tower makes one recall the shapes of the Baroque structures. This impression is more intensified when the Cathedral in recent times was restored with gold.

By the year of 1905 the high street of old Omsk – Lyubinsky Prospect had been finally formed. No doubt, the leading role of its architectural complex belonged to the Moscow rows of stalls (= торговые ряды). Various Russian manufactory joint-stock companies (including P.Ryabushinsky, S.Morozov, the Nosovs) accommodated their goods for wholesale trade there.

The famous Paris Grand-Opera had served as a prototype for a great number of theatre buildings in Russia. The Omsk Drama Theater was among them. en years the edifice was topped by the statue of a “Winged Genius”.

In 1911 the famous West Siberian agricultural and industrial exhibition was organized in Omsk. The novelty and originality of the form of its pavilions in the Modernist style had rather a great influence upon the building practice of the town.

The Omsk Railway Administration can be really perceived as a monument to the Great Siberian railway track (the Trans-Siberian Railway) due to the radical transformation it brought. Omsk has turned into a large industrial and commercial city by the early twentieth century.

And soon, in 1923 two engineers worked out a project according to which Omsk would have to be converted into a garden city. The start of this realization was made immediately bringing to Omsk the fame of a city of gardens and flowers by the late 1950s.

The panorama of the city is enriched by some new largescale erections of the last decades. They are the Shopping Centre, the Musical Theatre, the Irtysh Complex-Hall for Sports and Concerts and the Pushkin Library.

(" Omsk. The City’s motifs” (I. Devetyarova, V. Chirkov)

http://www. univer.omsk/city.html

Ex. 34. Read the text and write out the number.Retell the text using your notes with the numbers.

The number of Russian travelling abroad grew 64% last year to 4.2 million, as government figures show. Coming the other way, the number of people visiting Russia last year grew 15% to 2.2 million.

Including citizen from the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) (= Содружество Независимых Государств), as many as 21 million people visited Russia last year, according to recent report by the department of strategic tourism development of the Economic Development and Trade Ministry.

However, the figures are not exact because the statistics were compiled from border control records, unlike in other countries where a full range of indicators exists.

Including trips to CIS countries, the ministry said that as many as 18 million Russians traveled abroad last year. Excluding the CIS, the top destination was Poland, where nearly 1 million Russians traveled, followed by China and Turkey.

In Western Europe, the most popular destinations for Russians were Spain with 111,000 and Italy with 106,000. France hosted 61,000 Russian tourists, while only 25,000 visited Britain. Other popular destinations include Egypt with 114,000, Cyprus with 109,000 and the United Arab Emirates with 89,000. Spain, Turkey and Cyprus are most popular in summer, while Egypt and the United Arab Emirates are usually visited in winter. Vocations abroad and at home cost roughly the same and Russian people are choosing the former.

The number of incoming tourists rose last year. The largest number of visitors, or 741, 000, came from Poland, followed by Finland. Rounding out the top 10, in order, were Germany, China, the United States, Italy, Latvia, Britain, Lithuania and France. Business travel to Russia rose by 9% to almost 2 million people.

(From Tourism as Business)

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