←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

Town Garden on Red Square in Yefremov

Point on route “Bunin's Yefremov”

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

Point 4

Town Garden on Red Square

🌿 Public garden or park • 🕵️ Urban legend

Historical Background

One of the nicest places to relax is the town garden. Longtime residents of Yefremov say it opened in the 1890s. “The garden was small and irregular in shape, like a boomerang. On holidays, when there was an entrance fee and the volunteer fire brigade's brass band played, the fountain was usually turned on. At the far end of the central alley, opposite the Streletsky Bridge, a wooden balustraded platform jutted out over the steep hillside so you could take in the surroundings. It offered a wonderful view of the Krasivaya Mecha River, the water meadows and the distances beyond the river” — this is how the garden is described, attributed to I. S. Turgenev.

Bunin's First Visit to Yefremov

It was in this garden that I. A. Bunin spent a summer night in 1887, when he first came to the town: “One fine summer day I suddenly ordered my saddle horse Kirgiz to be saddled and galloped off to Yefremov, toward Yasnaya Polyana, which was no more than a hundred versts from us. But when I reached Yefremov I took fright and decided to think it over more seriously and spend the night in Yefremov. All night I was torn between going and not going; I wandered around the town at night and got so tired that, coming into the town garden at dawn, I fell dead asleep on the first bench I came to. When I woke up I had sobered up completely, thought a little more — and galloped back home.” (Bunin, then a teenager, had set out to meet his idol Leo Tolstoy at Yasnaya Polyana.) Bunin himself recalled the town garden this way: “In the evening in the town garden there are young men and girls with their cheeks bandaged up — toothache. Some of the girls wash the floors and milk the cow at home before going to the garden, and in the garden a cakewalk thunders for them.”