Saturday 3 April 2010

The surprising Khabarovsk : culture, art and leisure

Khabarovsk main square, with the unique set of 9 fountains.


As for street art, statues and sculptures are everywhere:

Amursky boulevard

Some more about Khabarovsk: this is a quite remote city that has an incredible cultural standard. The Museum borough is amazing.


The Art Museum displays local artists, of course, but also Tiziano, Garofalo or Canaletto:

"Rebecca al pozzo", by Tiziano, Khabarovsk Museum of Far Eastern Art

The museum also has a collection of early slavic icons:


As for the beautiful Archeological Museum, the main feature are the reproductions and diagrams of the wide-eyed figures found at the ancient Sikachi-Alyan petroglyphs. some dating from 30 000 years ago. 

The Archeological Museum, a brick red-and-gray facade. 

These unique cliff-carvings have been added to the UNESCO World Heritage list.

There are several theaters and a permanent circus in town. This is the beautiful brick façade of the Theater for the young spectators


Churches also abound, with their characteristic golden crowned towers: 


Cathedral church of the Saviour’s Transfiguration.

Only completed in 2004, this is the 3rd tallest church in all Russia.
The adjacent Orthodox Seminar, in the same square:



The russian orthodox Grado-Khabarovsk Cathedral of Mother of God’s Assumption



Science also has a strong presence; this is the Far Eastern Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, with several research areas: mathematics, computers, geophysics, economics, mining...


I will end with the promenade along the Amur river, overlooking at China, which is in itself a work if art: