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The town of Solvychegodsk or Sol-Vychegodskaya, or Usolye Vychegodskoye, as it was called in ancient times, is an old Russian Northern town on the banks of the Vychegda River, a tributary of the Northern Dvina, in the Kotlas District of the Arkhangelsk Region. Solvychegodsk was founded in the second half of the 15th century (it was first mentioned in Ust-Vymsky Yarensky Letopisets (Chronicles) under the year of 1492) by people from Novgorod and Suzdal. It had developed as a town only by the middle of the 16th century. Situated along the way to Siberia Solvychegodsk was developing quickly. Its flourishing was favoured by its strategic geographical situation along the busy water ways and by brisk rise of salt production. In the second half of the 16th – the 17th centuries Solvychegodsk became a large centre of salt production, industries and trade, as well as the main residence of the famous dynasty of the Stroganovs.
In the 17th - 19th centuries Solvychegodsk is one of the renowned centre of the church embroidery (veils, altar-cloths, shrouds), chasing, filigree, the ‘Stroganov School’ icon painting, original school of pictural enamel (the so called ‘usolskaya enamel’), of book printing and binding. The Stroganovs are associated with the building of first stone churches in Solvychegodsk. The most ancient of them, the Blagoveshchensky (Annunciation) Cathedral, is the most valuable monument of the Northern stone architecture of the 16th century. Another, not less important building of the Stroganovs, is the Cathedral of the Vvedensky (the Presentation in the Temple) Monastery, a wonderful monument of the Russian Baroque art of the end of the 17th century. Both Cathedrals had been collecting treasures - marvelous icons in silver shields, gold-embroidered veils, shrouds and aers, precious utensils, handwritten and first printed books.
Near the Blagoveshchensky Cathedral there is the Zhemchuzhnoye (Pearl) Lake where, as legend says, they used to grow pearls for decorating icons in the 16th - 17th centuries.
In the 16th-17th centuries Sol-Vychegodskaya was one of the largest centres of salt production in the Russian North. The Posad (the large village) owned up to 90 saltworks which produced about 700 thousand poods (1 pood = 16.38 kg) of salt a year.
Solvychegodsk was registered as the town of the Arkhangelsk Guberniya (region) in 1708.
In the 19th century Solvychegodsk became the place of political exile. Many well-known members of Narodnaya Volya (‘People’s Freedom’) organization as well as leaders and participants of almost all mass revolutionary movements in Russia at the end of the 19th – the beginning of the 20th centuries were ordered to stay there. In 1911 Joseph Stalin served his sentence in exile there; the house where he lived is a tourist attraction now.
In 1919 the Museum of Local History and Arts was opened at the Blagoveshchensky Cathedral, its collection contains even now the first-class objects of art from the Solvychegda Land.
Since 1923 Solvychegodsk has been developing as a resort. Thanks to the mineral sources and silt mud a balneological sanatorium has appeared, today it is one of the best resorts in the North.
Today Solvychegodsk is known as a balneological resort; its monuments of the Russian white stone architecture of the 16th-17th centuries are of great interest for tourists; its Museum is proud of the unique collections of icons of the ‘Stroganov’s School’, objects of silver and gold embroidery.
Over 40 monuments of the white stone architecture have been preserved in the town. The most famous are the family church of the Stroganovs, the Blagoveshchensky (Annunciation) Cathedral which is the most valuable monument of the Russian stone construction art with frescoes of the 16th century; and the Cathedral of the Vvedensky (the Prersentation in the Temple) Monastery, the splendid monument of the Russian Baroque art of the 17th century which impresses with its huge 7-tier carved iconostasis and icons of the ‘Stroganov’s School’.
The present-day Solvychegodsk is a native place of the literary personage Kozma Prutkov; to honour him there is an annual Kozma Prutkov Festival of Humour held in July. The tradition to have Prokopiyevskaya Fair has been renewed in the town.
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Monastery
