The Bétancourt Canal (the encircling canal of the Nizhny Novgorod Fair) is a hydraulic engineering structure dug during the construction of the fair complex in 1817–1822 in the lowland of the Oka's left bank, on the territory of present-day Kanavino, to the design of the Spanish engineer in Russian service Augustin de Bétancourt [3]. Sweeping around the fair's arcade in a horseshoe on three sides, the canal reached up to a hundred metres in width and more than a kilometre and a half in length [1][2], and formed the backbone of the engineering system of the Nizhny Novgorod Fair: it served for hauling goods, as a fire reserve, and for flushing the underground sewer galleries [6] — a vaulted sewer system, built here for the first time in Russia [7].
The plan: a trading town on a floodable lowland
After it was decided to move the trade fair from beneath the walls of the Makaryev Monastery, where the Makaryev Fair had previously been held, to a site near Nizhny Novgorod, the task of laying out the new grounds was given to Augustin de Bétancourt. He arrived in Nizhny Novgorod on 23 July 1817, and construction of the fair proceeded under his direction [3].
The site allotted for the fair — 384 desyatinas [3] — lay on a low bank subject to flooding: even of the finished fair it was written that in spring it was "flooded by the Volga and Oka high water" and people travelled the streets by boat, "a kind of Venice" [1]. Bétancourt proposed raising the ground beneath the future shops and turning the excavated earth into canals, which would transform the site into a "little Venice": through a system of locks the canals connected to lakes and, further on, to the Volga, so that vessels could deliver goods directly to the merchants' warehouses [3].
The first fair on the new site opened on 20 July 1817 and was held in temporary stalls; the stone Gostiny Dvor (arcade), made up of 60 two-storey buildings with 2,530 shops, took five years to build. The fair was linked to the city by a pontoon (floating) bridge across the Oka, 510 metres long — the longest in Russia at the time [3].
Structure
The encircling canal enclosed the central part of the complex in a horseshoe on three sides: its width reached up to 100 metres, its length exceeded a kilometre and a half [1][2]. Numerous bridges spanned its course [2][4].
Sources differ on where the canal drew its water from. The Fair's official history states that it connected to Lake Meshcherskoye and to the 20-kilometre Pyra Canal, which supplied an additional volume of water [1]; a local-history account of Bétancourt's water system asserts the opposite — that the level of the encircling canal stood significantly higher than the Oka, the Volga, and Lake Meshcherskoye, and that this was precisely why a separate feeder canal about 20 kilometres long was dug from the Pyra River to the fair [5][8]. This canal collected the waters of the Pyra, the Chornaya, the Parasha, and several small streams, and connected to Lake Meshcherskoye and the Volga through a system of locks [5][8].
The water served three purposes at once: hauling goods, a fire-fighting reserve, and flushing the underground sewer galleries [6]. The galleries — two brick tunnels 640 metres long each, lined with brick along the floor, walls, and vault — ran beneath the fair's buildings; a vaulted sewer system of this kind was built here for the first time in Russia [7], and according to the Fair's official history it was the first in Europe as well [1][2]. The Fair's official website describes the entire hydraulic engineering system as comparable only to similar structures at the imperial residences of Tsarskoye Selo and Peterhof [1].
The demise of the water system
The fair's water system operated for about ten years [4]. The bed of the feeder canal had been dug through sandy ground and left unreinforced: in 1830 the Pyra Canal collapsed, water circulation through it ceased, and the encircling canal came to be filled only during the spring flood. In 1835 restoring the canal was judged impractical and it was abandoned for good [5][8].
The feeder channel itself fared better: in the forests of Balakhna District, between the Pyra River and Lake Guryanovo, the canal survives virtually unchanged; stretches of it can also be traced on the city's outskirts near Sormovo [5][8].
Memory of the canal
The engineer's name is borne by Bétancourt Street in Zarechye: a straight thoroughfare, it links the "Meshcherskoye Ozero" residential district with the Transfiguration Old Fair Cathedral. The height of the buildings along the street decreases as it approaches the church — the building closest to it is the lowest, four storeys, "so as not to diminish the dignity" of the landmark [9].
In 2021, for the 800th anniversary of Nizhny Novgorod, landscaping work on the fair grounds created a small artificial canal with a water surface here, evoking the history of the site [10] — the art installation "Bétancourt's Canal," conceived as an homage to the engineer's hydraulic works [6]. The landscaping concept was developed by the architectural firm Megabudka under the curation of the Institute for Urban Environment Development of Nizhny Novgorod Oblast, and the work was funded by the United Metallurgical Company (OMK), which invested about 300 million rubles in transforming the site [10].
Sources
- yarmarka.ru — History. Official website of the "Nizhny Novgorod Fair" (archive)
- history.ru — Nizhny Novgorod Fair (I). Historical Encyclopedia (archive)
- нгодб.рф — Augustin de Bétancourt: father of the Nizhny Novgorod Fair. T. A. Mavrina Nizhny Novgorod State Regional Children's Library
- nn.aif.ru — Russia's pocket. 10 interesting facts about the Nizhny Novgorod Fair (archive)
- geocaching.su — Bétancourt's hydraulic structures (archive)
- yarmarka.ru — Territory. The "Bétancourt's Canal" art installation (archive)
- putidorogi-nn.ru — Nizhny Novgorod Fair: description, architecture, interesting facts (archive)
- autotravel-nn.ru — The Pyra Canal of engineer Augustin de Bétancourt (archive)
- book-hall.ru — Bétancourt Street. Centralized Library System of Kanavinsky District (archive)
- V Gorode N — The canal, the Shukhov Tower, and the tea lady: how the Nizhny Novgorod Fair was transformed (archive)