"Moorish Castle" in Irkutsk: How an Arabian-style building appeared in Siberia

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

There is an amazing house in Irkutsk. It is very elegant and original and is called a Moorish castle. And on its facade you can see the names of the great explorers of the North and Siberia. The money for the construction of the building at the end of the 19th century was collected by all of Russia, which is not surprising, because this is the building of the oldest museum in our country, the exhibits of which are unique. But today we will not talk about the rich fund of the famous museum of local lore, but about the amazing architecture of its building, as if by mistake it came here from North Africa.

The building of the VSOIRGO Museum (East Siberian Department of the Imperial Russian Geographical Society), and now the Irkutsk Regional Museum of Local Lore, was built after the terrible fire of 1879, which destroyed more than 22 thousand unique exhibits of the museum, as well as its unique library, which consisted of about 10 thousand books … This fire was very large-scale: in Irkutsk then more than half of the city buildings burned down, including, alas, the building in which the museum was located. The rapid spread of the fire was facilitated by the fact that many buildings in the city were wooden.

After the fire, the townspeople began to collect funds for the construction of a new stone building for the local history museum. Funds came from all over Russia, but local merchants and benefactors made a particularly serious contribution.

The building began to be erected in the fall of 1882, and a year later it was solemnly opened to visitors. The museum had two floors - one showed exhibits, and the other was intended for the meetings of members of the VSOIRGO.

In 1891, an extension for new showrooms was added. In 1901, the building of the museum was expanded: it had two halls with towers. And nine years later, an observatory was opened on the right of the towers overlooking the embankment.

The author of the project is Baron Heinrich Rosen, a talented architectural engineer. He graduated from a construction school in St. Petersburg and before joining the service in Irkutsk, he designed houses in the cities of Grodno, Kazan and even in St. Petersburg. In the northern capital, he built state, private buildings, as well as a temple. In Irkutsk, in addition to the "Moorish castle", Rosen designed a pseudo-Gothic orphanage (now the building houses an eye clinic), a wooden two-story kindergarten and many other buildings. Rosen also participated in the design of the extension to the museum, which was done after its opening.

Although the museum is called Moorish, the architectural style of this building is more correctly called pseudo-Moorish. And this, of course, is not modern (sometimes it is mistakenly referred to as this style fashionable at the end of the century before last).

Helmet-shaped domes, bas-reliefs, stucco decoration in the form of a vine and, of course, unusual forms amaze with their beauty and originality. The balcony on the roof is "decorated" with a figured lattice railing. The driveway gate is made in the form of an arch resting on a pair of pillars.

By the way, earlier near the main building one could see a beautiful openwork lattice, however, alas, it was demolished in the Soviet years.

On one of the building facades, finished with red brick, one can read the names of the famous explorers of Siberia, Lake Baikal, the North and Asia - Wrangel, Krashennikov, Przhevalsky, Chersky, Bering, etc. The first names on stone tablets were applied to the facade back in 1883 year, and then, for almost two decades, this "list" was replenished.

The "Moorish" building in severe Irkutsk looks like it was brought here from some Tunisia or Morocco. How great it is to admire this "piece of North Africa" for the townspeople and guests of Irkutsk, especially since the building has actually retained its original appearance to this day!

By the way, in Moscow you can also see a house with Moorish features - a kind of "Moorish-Spanish mixture": this is Morozov's mansion on Vozdvizhenka. Lovers of such buildings will surely be interested in extravagant architecture of the mystic Mazyrin..