Kaluga Oblast.

History

People lived here as early as the Mesolithic. The chronicles name the first towns in the 12th century — Kozelsk in 1146 and Serensk in 1147 — while Kaluga first appears in 1371 as a border fortress. In the 14th and 15th centuries much of the area belonged to Lithuania. In 1480 the Great Stand on the Ugra River ended the Horde's rule over Russian lands. The present oblast was formed in July 1944 from districts of neighbouring regions.

Culture & traditions

Tsiolkovsky taught in Kaluga from 1892 to 1935, and in 1967 the city opened the first Soviet museum of the history of cosmonautics, named after him. Near Kozelsk stands Optina Monastery, famed in the 19th century for its elders and visited by Gogol, Dostoevsky, Turgenev and Tolstoy. Kaluga itself keeps the Korobov Chambers, a 17th-century example of civic architecture. Marshal Georgy Zhukov and mathematician Pafnuty Chebyshev were born in the region.

Nature

Forests cover about 45% of the land, and the region has more than 2,000 rivers, the Oka chief among them. The highest point is Zaytseva Gora at 279 metres. Ugra National Park was created in 1997 to protect typical Central Russian landscapes and became a UNESCO biosphere reserve in 2002; the endangered Russian desman lives in its lakes. The forests are home to brown bear, lynx, elk and beaver, and Lakes Bezdon and Svyatoye stand out among the region's lakes.

Sport

The region's main football club is FC Kaluga, founded in 2009. The rivers of Ugra National Park are popular with kayakers.

Food & drink

Kaluga Oblast is a notable dairy region, with high milk yields on its farms. Local cooking is simple and Central Russian in style.

Practical information

Kaluga is about 150 km from Moscow, and Grabtsevo Airport serves the city. The main railway line towards Kyiv crosses the region (Kaluga was linked to Moscow by rail in 1899), as does the M3 highway. The region runs on Moscow time. The climate is moderately continental, with July averages of +18 to +21°C and January averages of −8 to −12°C. Summer and early autumn are best, when the rivers are good for paddling.

What to see

• Tsiolkovsky Museum of the History of Cosmonautics — the first of its kind in the USSR, opened in 1967
• Optina Monastery — where Russian writers came to seek the advice of the elders
• Ugra National Park — river valleys, kayaking and the site of the 1480 Great Stand
• Nikola-Lenivets — a large open-air art park within the national park
• Korobov Chambers in Kaluga — a 17th-century stone townhouse

Cities on the map

• Kaluga 337,058