Novosibirsk: the capital of Siberia

Having grown from nothing around a railway bridge on the Trans-Siberian at the end of the 19th century, Novosibirsk is today Siberia's largest city.

The centre is explored on foot, with the metro useful for crossing the Ob and reaching the more distant neighbourhoods.

The Novosibirsk Opera and Ballet Theatre, with its dome among the largest in the world for a theater building, remains the architectural symbol of the city.

A short walk away, the Regional Museum tells the story of the city, born practically from nothing in 1893 around the railway bridge over the Ob River, in a Soviet-era building.

Continuing, you walk along the banks of the Ob River, Russia's fourth longest river, which in winter freezes completely allowing ice sports activities.

As evening approaches, the Akademgorodok neighborhood, just outside the city, hosts one of the most important Russian scientific research centers, immersed in a forest of birches.

Novosibirsk did not exist before 1893: it grew so rapidly around the Trans-Siberian Railway construction site that it became, in barely a century, Russia's third-most populous city.

Akademgorodok was founded in the 1950s as a Soviet science city, designed to attract the country's best researchers far from the power centers of Moscow.