Kemerovo is a Russian city located on the Tom River in Kemerovo Oblast. The city’s history goes back to several smaller villages that were founded over the years on the area of ​​the current city. Among others, the settlement of Shcheglovsk was established here in 1701, and Kemerovo from 1734 was one of seven villages located here in 1859.

Coal was discovered along the Tom in 1721, and the first coal mine opened in 1907, and ten years later Shcheglovsk had approximately 4,000 inhabitants. Shcheglovsk formally became a city in 1918, and it is considered the founding of Kemerovo. In 1932, the entire urban area was named Kemerovo, and throughout the 20th century Soviet period, the population boomed from 132,000 in 1939 to over 500,000 in 1989.

Today you can take some nice walks in Kemerovo and see the city’s sights. You can start at the square Ploshad Sovetov, which is the center of Kemerovo. In the square you can see the city’s statue of the state leader Lenin, which was inaugurated in 1970. The large square was laid out in the 1950s, and the city’s most important administrative buildings were built around it. This applies, for example, to the Communist Party’s regional government building, Dom Sovetov, which is located behind the Lenin statue. Dom Sovetov, like several other period buildings such as the post office and the town council building on the square, was built in the 1950s.

You can also see several churches in Kemerovo, such as Zamensky Cathedral, which is the city’s episcopal seat. The cathedral was consecrated in 1996 after the first church on the site had been demolished during the Soviet era. There are also other churches worth seeing, such as the Holy Trinity Church, which was built in 1998-2005.

In the northern part of Kemerovo, close to the banks of the Tom, you can visit Krasnaya Gorka, an interesting museum of coal mining. The museum is located by the steep riverbank, where an active coal mine has been located over time. The cultural and industrial historical parts of the operation have been preserved, and they are located in their natural landscape environment.

Today you can see the history of the place, various machines for the operation and buildings from the active years, when in the 1920s there were miners from 30 different countries. Nearby, you can take a trip to the Kuzbass Miners’ Memorial, another name for Kemerovo Oblast. The memorial was erected in 2003 and made by Ernst Neizvestnyj.