Tomsk: Siberia's wooden architecture

On the Tom River in remote western Siberia, Tomsk holds the oldest university in all of Siberia alongside a unique heritage of wooden architecture.

The downtown, famous for the wooden architecture of Siberia, requires a car to navigate between distant neighborhoods.

The carved wooden houses of Tomsk, richly decorated with intricate geometric and floral motifs, remain among the best-preserved examples of wooden architecture throughout Siberia.

A few minutes away, the Tomsk State University, the oldest in all of Siberia, enlivens a wide historic campus founded in the distant 1878.

Continuing towards the centre, you visit the Tomsk Local History Museum, which recounts Russian colonisation of western Siberia.

Towards evening, the Tom riverbank enlivens pleasant urban walks with views of the forested and green surrounding banks.

Tomsk, founded way back in 1604 as a Cossack fortress, fortunately avoided the great Trans-Siberian railroad construction, which bypassed it in favor of nearby Novosibirsk, thus preserving its rich wooden architectural heritage.

Tomsk State University, founded in 1878 as the first university east of the Urals, quickly made the city an important academic and scientific center of all western Siberia.