Cultural tourism in Russia > Kirov region > Slobodskoy

Slobodskoy

Slobodskoy, the town of regional subordination, is the center of the Slobodskoy area of the Kirov region.

It is located in the central part of the region, on the right bank of the Vyatka River. In 1972, Slobodskoy was added to the list of Russia’s historical cities. The population is 37.2 thousand persons. The distance from the regional center is 35 km.

The official date of foundation of the town is the year of 1505.

A wooden Michael the Archangel Church built without a single nail in 1610 is the oldest surviving building in Slobodskoy and in the whole region. In 1973, shortly after its reconstruction, the church was presented at the fair Russian Wooden Plastic Arts in Paris.

The heart of the town is its key square with a 66-meter bell tower in the center built upon the project of an architect I.D. Dussar de Neville in 1823. In 1851, a local craftsman V.I. Rysev installed the chimes, 2.5 meters in diameter, on the bell tower. The chimes are still measuring time.

Slobodskoy is the town of merchants, erected at the intersection of trade routes linking Moscow, Ural and Siberia, and Arkhangelsk, Kazan and Astrakhan. Merchants’ solid mansions, a bazaar building and a shopping arcade have survived in the center of the town to present day. Ksenofont Anfilatov (1761-1820), a well-known merchant, pioneered in sending a merchant ship from Arkhangelsk to America and, thus, opened a new outlet for Russian trade.

A future romanticist Alexander Grin was born in Slobodskoy in 1880.

At present, Slobodskoy is one of industrial centers of the Kirov region. The region is proud of the enterprises operating in the town. They are a plywood manufacturing plant Krasny Yakor which products are known in many countries of the world, a furniture factory, a match factory Belka-Favorit, and a distillery.