Residents of Chelyabinsk and guests of the city can learn a lot about the capital of the South Urals - about the areas where there are apartments with poltergeists, about where Love Street is located and where the names of Gradsky mine and Port Arthur came from.
These and many other interesting facts are revealed by the guides on the excursion, which was organized by one of the oldest travel companies in the country. Here are just a few of the Chelyabinsk secrets.
Where to find a poltergeist?
• The hill at the intersection of Pobeda and Sverdlovsky avenues is called Simeonovskaya Gorka. The name is from the temple of Simeon of Verkhotursky, which once stood here. There was a cemetery nearby, which occupied the territory between Pobedy Avenue and Kalinina Street. Now there are residential buildings. Some locals claim that you can encounter a poltergeist in apartments. There are even enthusiasts willing to pay to visit "bad apartments." A corner house on the same crossroads, if you turn towards the Metallurgichesky District, is also known for the same apartments.
• The Pugachevskaya Gorka is a hill on Sverdlovsky Prospekt at the entrance to the Metallurgichesky District. During the Pugachev uprising, ataman Gryaznov, who was besieging the Chelyabinsk fortress, was camped here. Nearby was the village of Pershinskaya, the majority of which were pro-Nazi Cossacks. A certain Nevzorov cruised between the camp and the fortress, who reported to Gryaznov about the situation in the fortress, and also brought letters to Chelyabinsk calling to surrender to the ataman. As a result, Gryaznov captured the fortress.
• The figure of a woman with a wreath that adorns the Palace of Culture of Metallurgists was originally supposed to decorate the Volga-Don Canal lighthouse. On the site of the boulevard, opposite the palace, there was a swamp for a long time. He was drained and planted with moisture-loving shrubs.
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Junkers over the city
• The clock on Bohdan Khmelnitsky Street was made of titanium alloy at the factory, where the shell for atomic bombs was made from the same material.
• Socialist Street was once called Love Street. There are preserved houses built by German prisoners of war. The buildings were erected from bricks, which included, among other ingredients, silt from the bottom of the First Lake. Therefore, you can still see shells in the walls. Houses of unusual architecture, although the Germans themselves said that this is more Dutch architecture. Who developed the projects is unknown. It is possible that someone from the prisoners.
Socialist Street was once called Love Street. Photo by Alexander Firsov
Memories have been preserved that there were many apple trees, flowers, music was playing, so couples loved to walk there - hence the name. There is an idea to reconstruct these houses, to open a cafe in the Bavarian style.
• Some Chelyabinsk residents still use the name “Airport settlement”. It is located far from the current airport - near the intersection of Pobeda and Komsomolsky avenues. Once there was an airfield where the first passenger plane landed on its way from Sverdlovsk to Magnitogorsk. By the way, the plane was of German production - "Junkers". After that, at the airfield, those who wished could practice parachuting, master the skills of aircraft control.
• Microdistrict Port Arthur, which is located in the Leninsky district behind the railway station, got its name after the Russo-Japanese War. For a long time there were settlements where all antisocial people settled. One of the settlements was even called Grabilovka. When the Cossacks began to return from the war, they were specially settled here so that they put things in order in the settlements. The name Port Arthur came from the Cossacks.
• Lake Smolino was formerly called Irentikul, which means "golden". By the way, the First and Second lakes also had Turkic names before, but before the construction of the thermal power station, these were not lakes, but rather swamps. As for Smolino, its waters periodically become either salty or fresh. Some believe that this is due to the fact that the lake is located on the border of Europe and Asia. Fresh water periodically comes from a giant underground lake.
Old-timers still remember that there was a pontoon on Smolino, which went far into the lake, and at the end of the pontoon there was a popular cafe.
Demolish everything
• According to the general plan of 1947 in the center of Chelyabinsk, it was supposed to demolish almost all the old buildings, as not representing architectural and cultural value. However, this barbaric plan was never implemented. Fortunately for the Chelyabinsk residents, a gas chemical plant was never built in the city - there were such plans.
• The Chelyabinsk settlement Gradsky mine (founded in the second half of the 19th century) on the outskirts of the Kurchatovsky district got its name not at all because of its proximity to the city, but after the name of one of the first owners of the gold mine, the German Gratt. After Gratt was beaten up by some hooligans at the Vasilievsky settlement, he sold the mine.
There are only three unusual trees left. Photo by Alexander Firsov
• Unusual Daurian larches that still stand on Lenin Avenue not far from the public library appeared in Chelyabinsk in 1905. One of the participants in the Russo-Japanese War carried the seeds of a beautiful tree home to Central Russia. He was taken to Chelyabinsk already seriously wounded, and the officer understood that he would soon die. Then he asked the actual state councilor Vladislav Sapega-Olshansky (he provided his house for the wounded) to plant seeds on the Chelyabinsk land. He fulfilled the will of the dying man. There were only 30 seeds, but only eight trees survived until the 21st century, and now there are only three of them.