An artistic chronicle, building design plans, the history of the main street and merchant estates — how the city told its own story in 2026.
In 2026 Irkutsk turned 365, and museums devoted a whole series of exhibitions to the anniversary.
The city through artists’ eyes
On 23 April the exhibition “365 on Irkutsk Time” opened at the art museum — more than 200 works, from the “View of Irkutsk from Across the Angara” by Meyer and Rezanov to contemporary artists and Pavel Lodyanov’s models of buildings.
The main street
On 30 April the regional museum of local history presented “Big History” — the story of Bolshaya Street from the palisade of 1726 to its renaming as Karl Marx Street in 1920.
Plans and coats of arms
In May the state archive and the Museum of the History of the City opened the exhibition “The Movement of Centuries Suits You”: design plans of buildings, the history of the coat of arms, and Leonid Lobanovich’s drawings from the 1920s and 1930s.
Estates
From 10 July the Decembrist Museum and the art museum are showing “Irkutsk 365. Of Estates and Fates” — the life of the merchants at the Sukachev Estate, continued at the Volkonsky Estate.
Sources (in Russian): Oblastnaya Gazeta, 24 April 2026; Glagol, 28 April 2026; IRK.ru, 24 May 2026; Sukachev Art Museum.
