Small town of Kaluga in Moscow Region combines happily saved 18th century Classicist urban area with memory about scientists made first steps for outer space exploration. Here lived in late 19th-early 20th century a school teacher Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, original and dreamer, who was the first to speak about flights to open space using rockets. The house where he lived and Museum of Space Exploration are situated here.

Shopping arcade
Shopping arcade is one of those buildings appeared as result of new regular town planning, mast Russian provincial centers got by Catherine the Great. City ensemble and plan of contemporary Kaluga has saved from that time. Picturesque Shoppinggg arcade was built upon the project of Russian well-known architect Petr Nikitinin, worked in Kaluga 1776-1784. It is a quadrangle building consisting of a few bulks. It was being constructed till 1823, when the last 5 bulks were ready. Shopping arcades like this, prototype of contemporary shopping centers existed in all towns, but did not save so good as this one.

Stone bridge

Stone bridge over Berezuevsky gulley constructed in 1777 by the same architect, Petr Romanovich Nikitin, is still one of the biggest viaducts in Russia. The bridge construction is supported by 15 stone arches designed in Classicist style. The central part of the bridge including 3 arches is double-level. Berezuy brook flowing on the bottom of gulley is now in a pipe.

The Stone bridge is tied with one ridiculous superstition: just married couples hang locks on the bridge parapet and throw keys into the gulley. This symbolize stability of their marriage or something. The city authorities try to fight against hanging of locks on the bridge and architecture monument, because it looks dowdy.

Tsiolkovsky Museum
Tsiolkovsky Museum is a small blue wooden house in Georgievskaya Street, 16 where Konstantin Eduardovitch Tsiolkovsky lived and worked in 1893-1902.

Space Exploration museum

Exhibitions of this museum acknowledge the visitor with history of ballooning, aviation and rocket-and-space technology. Museum was created in 1967 through Yuri Gagarin's mediation. The museum is one of the largest in the world and the biggest in Russia dealing with such thematic. Scientific heritage of Tsiolkovsky is here represented especially full.

The museum building is also worth a to be mentioned. Its style is futuristic, the space around it is designed with cones of first Soviet rockets, including booster of Vostok: such rocket delivered Yuri Gagarin on orbit in 1961 after his "here we go!".

Huge size of the building lets exhibiting of full size models of space vehicles, buttons, scaphandres and other spacemen accessories.

Kaluga is available by suburban trains, leaving from Kievsky Railway station in Moscow, by buses leaving from Teply Stan Metro station and by car as well: you should take Kaluzhskoye highway (A-101).

www.kalugaresort.ru
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