If you like history, you should definitely visit Smolensk, one of the oldest cities in the territory of modern Russia. Despite the fact that he suffered during the Great Patriotic War, many objects of antiquity have survived here, the oldest of which are only the stones of which they are composed.
No one knows when it was founded. For the first time, the city is mentioned in the annals dated to the middle of the 9th century. Since Smolensk has been defending the western borders of Russia for centuries, it is often called the “shield city” or the “shield of Russia”. Smolensk is the most remote administrative center of the region from Moscow, bordering the Moscow region. Most researchers agree that the name of the city comes from the Smolnya River. The mighty Dnieper River originates in the Smolensk region. Smolensk stands on both its banks. There are about half of cloudy days here annually.
For a long time the city was the capital of the Principality of Smolensk, and later was part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. At the end of the 14th century, the plague devastated Smolensk, and according to the annals, only five citizens remained alive. A stone fortress instead of a wooden Kremlin was built here at the turn of the 16-17th centuries. During Napoleon’s invasion of Russia, Smolensk was ruined, and the restoration took decades. The first film show took place here in 1901. The Byzantine Emperor Constantine mentioned Smolensk as a “major city” in his work “On the management of the Empire”.
Yuri Gagarin, the first astronaut in the world, hails precisely from here, from Smolensk. A native of this city, Maurice Markin moved to the United States at the beginning of the last century, where he later became the owner of the largest taxi company in New York. It was he who popularized the classic yellow cabs these days, of which there are so many on New York streets. Throughout the year, the famous composer M.I. Glinka lived and worked here. On the Smolensk coat of arms depicts a mythical bird gamayun. Smolensk has 8 twin cities in different countries.
