Tyumen.

History

A fort on the Tura was founded on 29 July 1586 by order of Tsar Feodor I, shortly after Yermak's campaign into Siberia. The town grew up on an old caravan route as a trading hub and in the 19th century was known for its leatherworkers, blacksmiths and other craftsmen. One theory traces the name to the Turkic and Mongolic word for 'ten thousand'. In October 1941 Lenin's body was secretly moved here and kept in a building of today's agricultural academy until the war ended. Tyumen became the centre of its own oblast in 1944, and the oil finds of the 1960s turned it into one of Russia's fastest-growing cities.

Culture & traditions

Trinity Monastery was founded in 1616 by the monk Nifont and rebuilt in stone in 1709–1711; between 1708 and 1885 the town gained twelve stone churches and two monasteries. Republic Street and Yamskaya Sloboda keep old brick and wooden merchant houses, while Bukharskaya Sloboda on the low bank of the Tura has very old one- and two-storey wooden buildings. The city has a local history museum, a Museum of Fine Arts and the Kolokolnikov Estate Museum, as well as a philharmonic and the Tyumen Music Hall. Children's writer Vladislav Krapivin is closely associated with the city.

Sport

Tyumen has teams in ice hockey, football, futsal, volleyball and handball, including FC Tyumen and the hockey club Rubin. The largest of its stadiums is Geolog. Just outside the city, in Michurino, is the Pearl of Siberia biathlon centre. Biathlete Anton Shipulin and hockey goaltender Andrei Vasilevskiy are among the athletes the city has produced.

Food & drink

Tyumen lies where the Urals give way to Siberia, and pelmeni, which reached Russian cooking from the Urals, are everyday home food here. They are kept frozen and boiled just before serving.

Practical information

Roshchino International Airport is 13 km west of the city. Tyumen is on the Trans-Siberian Railway, with trains to Yekaterinburg (about 300 km away), Omsk and Tobolsk; Moscow is some 1,700 km west. Local time is Moscow plus two hours. The climate is continental, averaging about −16 °C in January and +19 °C in July, so summer is the easiest season for walking the city.

What to see

• Trinity Monastery — founded in 1616 and rebuilt in stone in the early 18th century
• Republic Street — brick and wooden merchant mansions
• Bukharskaya Sloboda — old wooden houses on the low bank of the Tura
• Kolokolnikov Estate Museum — how Tyumen's merchants lived
• Lovers' Bridge — one of the best-known crossings of the Tura
• Pearl of Siberia — the biathlon centre at Michurino