Nizhny Novgorod

Nizhny Novgorod (Russian: Нижний Новгород; IPA: [ˈnʲiʐnʲɪj ˈnovɡərət]), colloquially shortened to Nizhny, is, with a population of 1,250,619,the fifth largest city in Russia and the administrative center of Nizhny Novgorod Oblast. From 1932 to 1990, it was known as Gorky (Горький, IPA: [ˈɡorʲkʲɪj]), after the writer Maxim Gorky who was born there. The city is an important economic, transportation and cultural center of Russia and the vast Volga-Vyatka economic region. It is located about 400 km east of Moscow.

City will host will host 2018 FIFA World Cup matches.

Climate

The climate in the region is continental, specifically humid continental (Dfb), and it is similar to the climate in Moscow, although colder in winter, which lasts from late November until late March with a permanent snow cover. Average temperatures range from +19 °C (66 °F) in July to −9 °C (16 °F) in January.

Cultural features

There are more than six hundred unique historic, architectural, and cultural monuments in the city.

There are about two hundred municipal and regional art and cultural institutions within Nizhny Novgorod. Among these institutions there are eight theaters, five concert halls, ninety-seven libraries (with branches), seventeen movie theaters (including five movie theaters for children), twenty-five institutions of children optional education, eight museums (sixteen including branches), and seven parks.

Nizhny Novgorod art gallery

The art gallery in Nizhny Novgorod is a large and important art gallery and museums of human history and culture.

Nizhny Novgorod has a great and extraordinary art gallery with more than 12,000 exhibits, an enormous collection of works by Russian artists such as Viktor Vasnetsov, Karl Briullov, Ivan Shishkin, Ivan Kramskoi, Ilya Yefimovich Repin, Isaak Iljitsch Lewitan, Vasily Surikov, Ivan Aivazovsky, there are also greater collections of works by Boris Kustodiev and Nicholas Roerich, not only Russian art is part of the exhibition it include also a vast accumulation of Western European art like works by David Teniers the Younger, Bernardo Bellotto, Lucas Cranach the Elder, Pieter de Grebber, Giuseppe Maria Crespi, Giovanni Battista Piranesi, and lot more.

Finally what makes this gallery extremely important is the amazing collection Russian avant-garde with works by Kazimir Malevich, Wassily Kandinsky, Natalia Goncharova,Mikhail Larionov and so on. There is also collection of East Asian art.

Houses of worship

Other notable landmarks are the two great medieval abbeys. The Pechersky Ascension Monastery features the austere five-domed cathedral (1632) and two rare churches surmounted by tent roofs, dating from the 1640s. The Annunciation monastery, likewise surrounded by strong walls, has another five-domed cathedral (1649) and the Assumption church (1678). The only private house preserved from that epoch formerly belonged to the merchant Pushnikov.

There can be little doubt that the most original and delightful churches in the city were built by the Stroganovs in the nascent Baroque style. Of these, the Virgin’s Nativity Church (1719) graces one of the central streets, whereas the Church of Our Lady of Smolensk(1694–97) survives in the former village of Gordeyevka (now, part of the city’s Kanavinsky District), where the Stroganov palace once stood.

Other notable churches include:

the Saviour Cathedral, also known as the Old Fair Cathedral, a huge domed edifice built at the site of the great fair to an Empire style design by Agustín de Betancourt and Auguste de Montferrand in 1822;
the so-called New Fair Cathedral, designed in the Russian Revival style and constructed between 1856 and 1880 at the confluence of the Oka and the Volga;
the recently reconstructed Church of the Nativity of John the Precursor (1676–83), standing just below the Kremlin walls; it was used during the Soviet period as an apartment house;
the parish churches of the Holy Wives (1649) and of Saint Elijah (1656);
the Assumption Church on St Elijah’s Hill (1672), with five green-tiled domes arranged unorthodoxly on the lofty cross-shaped barrel roof;
the shrine of the Old Believers at the Bugrovskoe cemetery, erected in the 1910s to a critically acclaimed design by Vladimir Pokrovsky;
the wooden chapel of the Intercession (1660), transported to Nizhny Novgorod from a rural area.

There is also a mosque in Sennaya Square, where the Muslim populations of the city go for Friday prayers, Islamic activities and activities which are organized by the mosque. There is also a small shop to buy halal meats. Most of the Muslims in this city are Tatars.

The centrally located Nizhny Novgorod Synagogue was built in 1881-1883; disused during the Soviet era, it was renovated and reopened ca. 1991.