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Kursk
Kursk (Курск; pronunciation: koorsk; IPA: ) is a city in the western part of Central Russia, at the confluence of Kur, Tuskar, and Seym rivers. It is the administrative center of Kursk Oblast. The population of the city was 412,442 in 2002 (according to the 2002 population census).
History
It is known that a Slavic fortified settlement existed there at least since 8th century AD, and other settlements since 4–5th century BC.
The first written record of Kursk is dated 1032. It was mentioned as one of Severian towns by Prince Igor in The Tale of Igor's Campaign: "As to my Kurskers, they are famous knights—swaddled under war-horns, nursed under helmets, fed from the point of the lance; to them the trails are familiar, to them the ravines are known, the bows they have are strung tight, the quivers, unclosed, the sabers, sharpened; themselves, like gray wolves, they lope in the field, seeking for themselves honor, and for their prince glory."
The seat of a minor principality, Kursk was raided by the Polovtsians in 12th and 13th centuries and destroyed by Batu Khan around 1237. The city was rebuilt no later than 1283. Kursk joined the centralized Russian state in 1508 becoming the southern border province of the state. It was a large centre of corn trade with Ukraine and hosted an important fair, which took place annually under the walls of the Our Lady of Kursk Monastery.
The Soviet government prized Kursk for rich deposits of iron ore and developed it into one of the major railroad hubs in the Russian Southwest. During World War II, the village of Prokhorovka near Kursk was the center of the Battle of Kursk, a major engagement between Soviet and German forces, which is widely believed by historians to be the largest tank battle in history and the last major German offensive mounted against USSR.
Attractions
The oldest building in Kursk is the upper church of the Trinity Monastery, a good example of the transition style characteristic for Peter the Great's early reign. The oldest lay building is the so-called Romodanovsky Chamber, although it was erected in all probability in the mid-18th century, when the Romodanovsky family had ceased to exist.
The city cathedral was built between 1752 and 1778 in the splendid Baroque style and was decorated so sumptuously that many art historians attributed it to Bartolomeo Rastrelli. Although Rastrelli's authorship is out of the question, the cathedral is indeed the most impressive monument of Elizabethan Baroque not to be commissioned by the imperial family or built in the imperial capital.
The cathedral has two storeys, with the lower church consecrated to St. Sergius of Radonezh and the upper one — to the Theotokos of Kazan. The upper church is noted for an intricate icon screen which took 16 years to complete. The three-storey cathedral belltower derives peculiar interest from the fact that Seraphim of Sarov, whose father took part in construction works, survived an accidental fall from its top floor...
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