Travel Notes

Prison Hospitality

St. Petersburg’s notorious Kresty (“Crosses”) Prison (pictured, above)  will be evacuated and may eventually be transformed into a deluxe hotel, Kommersant reported. Prisoners will be moved into a new prison in 2013, and the government will place the structure, built in 1892, up for auction. 

Kresty has historically been a transit prison. In the 1930s, it housed many political prisoners – stuff--ing up to 17 people in each
3 m² cell. Nikolai Zabolotsky, Lev Gumilev, and Daniil Kharms are but a few of the writers who spent time in Kresty; Kharms died there. The prison’s unusual floorplan may not attract investors as much as its prime location on Arsenalnaya Embankment. Due to its designation as an architectural landmark, the prison cannot be extensively remodeled.

Petting Zoo

The Moscow Zoo has opened a children’s petting zoo. It will be open from 11 am to 3 pm, weather permitting. Children will also be able to feed some of the animals.

Bug Eater Bronzed

A monument to gambuzia – a mosquito-eating fish that effectively ended malaria in Sochi, preparing the way for resorts in the area – was unveiled in a local park. 

Gambuzia was imported from the U.S. in the 1910s, and ended up in Sochi by way of neighboring Abkhazia in the 1930s. At the time, much of Black Sea coast was a mosquito-infested swampland; some 60,000 people died of malaria between 1922 and 1933. By 1956 not a single case of malaria was registered in Sochi, and the city fast became a resort area, with hundreds of sanatoria dotting the coast. 

Museum On the Move

Moscow’s State Literature Museum will move out of Vysoko-Petrovsky Monastery into a building that once belonged to pre-revolutionarly philanthropist Savva Morozov. The precise address of the new location (which is still being remodeled) has not been stated; Morozov, a nineteenth century manufacturer, owned dozens of structures in the city. 

The move is necessitated by the gradual return of state property to the Orthodox Church. The red brick Vysoko-Petrovsky Monastery, centrally located on ulitsa Petrovka, was officially closed in 1918, yet housed a secret monastic community well into the Soviet period. The fate of the Literature Museum has been in limbo for several years; there was even talk for a time that it might be moved to St. Petersburg.

New Hotel Vintage

Abrau-Durco champagne is teaming up with the Russian hotel chain Cronwell to create a hotel brand for wine lovers in Russia. The first “tasteful hotel,” as the business is advertised, will be built in Abrau-Durco, a winemaking town in Krasnodar region. The 40-room boutique hotel will include a spa and wine cellar. Abrau-Durco will invest $80 million in the project and hopes to expand the chain throughout Krasnodar region.

Russia in Miniature

The largest ever scale model of Russia, constructed on a 1:87 scale, is currently under construction and will be available for viewing next year on St. Petersburg’s Tsvetochnaya ulitsa. Complete with figurines, thousands of lights and motion powered roads and railroads, the model measures about 800 m² and the building housing the project will be able to handle some 60 thousand tourists per year, according to the project website (grand-maket.ru), which has webcams that allow visitors to view construction in progress. The European part of the country, including Kaliningrad, has already been finished.

Dacha Gallery

The poet Yegeny Yevtushenko has opened a museum dacha in Peredelkino dacha village, just west of Moscow. The museum is built on the poet’s dacha plot, and includes photos from his extensive travels, art by Picasso, Chagal, and other famous painters, as well as various other artifacts, including Mark Twain’s cane, according to Vash Dosug magazine. 

In the Soviet era, notable writers were typically given dachas in Peredelkino, and the properties would be returned to the state when the writer died. Only three dachas, those belonging to Bulat Okudzhava, Boris Pasternak, and Korney Chukovsky, have been previously preserved as -museums.