←Bunin's Yefremov

Bunin's Yefremov

Photo of route “Bunin's Yefremov”
6 points6 km1.5 hours

The town of Yefremov is closely tied to Ivan Bunin, the first Russian Nobel laureate in literature. You'll see old houses that remember the writer and wander through the town grove where Bunin read his poems more than a hundred years ago.

Route author

Susanin Team

Things to do

  • 📜 Learn the city's history
  • 🏛️🕰️ Compare the eras

Route points (6)

  1. Monument to I. A. Bunin at Yefremov Railway Station — point on route “Bunin's Yefremov”

    Monument to I. A. Bunin at Yefremov Railway Station

    🗿 Monument

  2. I. A. Bunin House Museum in Yefremov — point on route “Bunin's Yefremov”

    I. A. Bunin House Museum in Yefremov

    🏛️ Museum · 📜 Historic site

  3. Red Square — point on route “Bunin's Yefremov”

    Red Square

    ⛲ Square · 🌿 Public garden or park

  4. Town Garden on Red Square — point on route “Bunin's Yefremov”

    Town Garden on Red Square

    🌿 Public garden or park · 🕵️ Urban legend

  5. Bunin Family Graves in the Town Grove — point on route “Bunin's Yefremov”

    Bunin Family Graves in the Town Grove

    📜 Historic site · 🗿 Monument

  6. I. A. Bunin Town Park — point on route “Bunin's Yefremov”

    I. A. Bunin Town Park

    🌿 Public garden or park

Red Square in Yefremov

Point on route “Bunin's Yefremov”

Red Square — point on route “Bunin's Yefremov”
Red Square — point on route “Bunin's Yefremov”
Red Square — point on route “Bunin's Yefremov”

Point 3

Red Square

⛲ Square • 🌿 Public garden or park

Historical Background

In past centuries this square was called the Lower Market Square, and it was and still is the town's main square. Once a dispute broke out between merchants and nobles over building houses next to the square and within the town limits. The merchants won. From then on, markets were held here — first twice and then three times a week — which is how it came to be called the Lower Market Square. In the middle of the square stood the famous trading rows, nicknamed the “obzhorka” (“the gluttony”): for three kopecks you could buy a bowl of rich cabbage soup with meat and bread, millet porridge with cracklings, fluffy buckwheat, a piece of meat and so on. The writer Konstantin Paustovsky remarked that the trading rows, with something like columns and arches hinting at old times, were the only interesting building in town. On market days the square around the rows was crowded: people came from the villages of Yefremov District. Peasant carts with all kinds of goods stood around the rows, and sellers loudly praised their wares.

Bunin on the Yefremov Fairs

On May 8, 1901, Ivan Bunin and Evgeny Bunin arrived in Yefremov, bringing a cow to sell. In a reply to Yuli Bunin, I. A. Bunin wrote: “You're in Naples now, and I'm in Yefremov — Evgeny and I have brought a cow to sell; there's a fair on here.”

I. A. Bunin, “The Cup of Life”

“…in Streletsk, this half-steppe little town, where only by the clumsy cathedral and the market square do the stone houses of the grain merchants show white, and on the outskirts there are hovels, poverty.”