Alexandrov is best known for its kremlin, which went down in history as the “capital of the Oprichnina” in the time of Ivan the Terrible. After that period the settlement kept growing. Merchant dynasties took shape here and played a key role in turning Alexandrov into a trading town. We invite you to explore this part of its history.
Railway Station
🚂 Railway station
Railway Station
Points will be available after purchasing the route
Yefim Ivanov's House
🏟️ Architectural landmark
Point 9
🏟️ Architectural landmark
Yefim Nikiforovich Ivanov was known for owning the largest tavern in the whole province: people came from all around for its rasstegai — open-topped pies famous for both their size and their taste. The merchant earned the money for his own business in his hometown of Kirzhach, where he worked as an ordinary waiter in another tavern. After moving to Alexandrov, Yefim Nikiforovich also built an apartment building, known in town today as the Ivanov House.
The building was put up in 1914, commissioned by the merchant Yefim Ivanov and designed by the Moscow architect M. E. Tyurin. Under the town-planning rules of the Russian Empire, apartment buildings were not allowed on a central square, but Yefim Nikiforovich found a way around it. He filled the lower floors with businesses such as the post office, the Furor cinema and even the town's very first telephone, and left room on the top floor for two apartments — supposedly so that the managers of the “offices” below could stay there temporarily. In the end he fitted out one apartment for himself and his family and rented out the other. It was in this house that Mavriky Mints and Anastasia Tsvetaeva lived for a while in 1915. A memorial plaque on the wall commemorates the writer and her work “Smoke, Smoke and Smoke”, which she wrote here while the family rented the apartment from Ivanov. But Tsvetaeva is not the building's only claim to fame. In 1914, local amateur musicians held a charity concert here for the families of Alexandrov men leaving for the front. Rumor has it that the poster said the hall had been provided free of charge — but whether by Ivanov or by the cinema's tenant, we don't know. Today the building houses the administration of Alexandrovsky District.
The house has four floors and, when it was built, was the tallest building in Alexandrov. Built of red brick in the provincial Art Nouveau style, it has two small balconies and a turret crowning the western part of the roof. Even at a glance you can see that one of the walls looks as if it had been sliced off with a knife, which looks odd. Drawings found in the 1990s by staff of Alexandrov's Tsvetaeva Museum showed that the house was never finished in the merchant's lifetime, and the turret was meant to sit in the middle of the roof rather than at its edge. It seems the money for the planned second half of the building simply ran out — or perhaps the work stopped for other reasons. Local historian E. B. Beglyakov also believes that the basement once housed a brewery and later, in wartime, soldiers' barracks.
Point on route “Merchant Alexandrov”
Point 9
🏟️ Architectural landmark
Yefim Nikiforovich Ivanov was known for owning the largest tavern in the whole province: people came from all around for its rasstegai — open-topped pies famous for both their size and their taste. The merchant earned the money for his own business in his hometown of Kirzhach, where he worked as an ordinary waiter in another tavern. After moving to Alexandrov, Yefim Nikiforovich also built an apartment building, known in town today as the Ivanov House.
The building was put up in 1914, commissioned by the merchant Yefim Ivanov and designed by the Moscow architect M. E. Tyurin. Under the town-planning rules of the Russian Empire, apartment buildings were not allowed on a central square, but Yefim Nikiforovich found a way around it. He filled the lower floors with businesses such as the post office, the Furor cinema and even the town's very first telephone, and left room on the top floor for two apartments — supposedly so that the managers of the “offices” below could stay there temporarily. In the end he fitted out one apartment for himself and his family and rented out the other. It was in this house that Mavriky Mints and Anastasia Tsvetaeva lived for a while in 1915. A memorial plaque on the wall commemorates the writer and her work “Smoke, Smoke and Smoke”, which she wrote here while the family rented the apartment from Ivanov. But Tsvetaeva is not the building's only claim to fame. In 1914, local amateur musicians held a charity concert here for the families of Alexandrov men leaving for the front. Rumor has it that the poster said the hall had been provided free of charge — but whether by Ivanov or by the cinema's tenant, we don't know. Today the building houses the administration of Alexandrovsky District.
The house has four floors and, when it was built, was the tallest building in Alexandrov. Built of red brick in the provincial Art Nouveau style, it has two small balconies and a turret crowning the western part of the roof. Even at a glance you can see that one of the walls looks as if it had been sliced off with a knife, which looks odd. Drawings found in the 1990s by staff of Alexandrov's Tsvetaeva Museum showed that the house was never finished in the merchant's lifetime, and the turret was meant to sit in the middle of the roof rather than at its edge. It seems the money for the planned second half of the building simply ran out — or perhaps the work stopped for other reasons. Local historian E. B. Beglyakov also believes that the basement once housed a brewery and later, in wartime, soldiers' barracks.
9 points
3 km
4 hours
