Tomsk Wooden Architecture

Siberia's finest collection of ornately carved wooden houses, unique in all of Russia

Tomsk's wooden architecture is the city's defining attraction. While most Siberian cities were rebuilt in Soviet concrete, Tomsk preserved an extraordinary collection of 19th-century wooden houses, their facades decorated with elaborate carved friezes, ornate window surrounds, and fanciful cornices. Walking the streets of the old town — particularly Krasnoarmeyskaya, Tatarskaya, and the streets near Resurrection Hill — is like walking through an open-air museum.

The most celebrated example is the House with Dragons (Dom s drakonami) at ulitsa Krasnoarmeyskaya 68, a two-storey house whose upper windows are flanked by carved wooden dragons. The House with Rooster and the Fairy-tale House (Skazochny Dom) on ulitsa Krasnoarmeyskaya are also worth seeking out. The Tomsk Regional Museum of Local History has a good exhibit on the history of this tradition and maintains a map of the best surviving examples, which is well worth picking up before you start walking.

Many of the houses are still inhabited and in various states of repair — some beautifully restored, others leaning noticeably and slowly decomposing. The fragility of the tradition is part of its poignancy. The best time to see the architecture is morning, when the light catches the carved details.

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A story
The carved wooden houses of Tomsk were built by craftsmen who arrived with the cigar-rolling families of the 19th century — but the decorative tradition goes further back to a guild of Siberian woodcarvers who developed their own regional style, featuring elaborate window surrounds, cornices, and friezes that have no real equivalent anywhere else in Russia. The finest surviving example, the House with Dragons at ulitsa Krasnoarmeyskaya 68, is named for the carved serpentine creatures flanking its upper windows.