Korolenko Street

Korolenko Street in the central part of Krasnodar retains a higher concentration of 19th and early 20th century merchant architecture than the main Krasnaya Street, which was widened and partially rebuilt in the Soviet period. The buildings here — solid multi-storey structures in various eclectic revival styles — reflect the prosperity of the pre-revolutionary Yekaterinodar merchant class.

Walking Korolenko alongside the adjacent streets gives a better sense of what the pre-Soviet city looked like: ornate corner buildings, ironwork balconies, and the occasional courtyard that has survived development. The area is still a mixed residential and commercial district; the buildings house apartments above and small businesses below, as they have for over a century. This is where you are most likely to find the local architectural heritage that the Soviet and post-Soviet building booms mostly bypassed.

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A story
Korolenko Street was the main street of Yekaterinodar — Krasnodar's pre-revolutionary name — in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when the city was growing rapidly from a Cossack fort into a prosperous regional capital. The merchant class that built the street's grander buildings made their money from grain and tobacco: the Kuban steppe was and is among the most productive agricultural land in Russia, and Yekaterinodar was the trading hub. The street is named for the Russian writer Vladimir Korolenko, who was exiled to the Caucasus in the 1880s.