Minin and Pozharsky Square — the main square of Nizhny Novgorod, situated in front of the The Kremlin in the Upper Town. In everyday speech it is simply called Minin Square.[1] Its former names were Verkhnеposadskaya, Verkhneбazarnaya, Blagoveshchenskaya Square, Seminarskaya, and, after the Revolution, Sovetskaya; the current name was officially fixed in November 1943, when the first monument to Kuzma Minin was erected at the Dmitrievskaya Tower.[1]

Layout

In plan the square resembles a ladle: a strip 60 metres wide and 550 metres long runs along the Kremlin wall from the Georgievskaya Tower to the Kladovaya Tower, widening into a semicircle at the Dmitrievskaya Tower.[1] This shape arose because the square was formed from two separate squares: the semicircular Blagoveshchenskaya and the elongated Seminarskaya.[1]

According to the 1770 plan, seven streets radiate from the square like spokes: Verkhne-Volzhskaya Embankment and what are now Minina Street, Ulyanova Street, Varvarskaya Street, Alekseevskaya Street, Bolshaya Pokrovskaya Street, and Pozharsky Street.[1] In 1839, two descents to the Volga were laid from its ends — the Zelensky Congress and the Georgievsky Descent.[1][2]

The Moat, the Market, and the Churches

A fortification moat ran from the Georgievskaya Tower along the wall as far as the Koromyslova Tower; a stone bridge more than 26 metres long spanned it from the Dmitrievskaya Tower to an outwork barbican.[1] At the end of the 18th century the bridge and the barbican were demolished and the moat was filled in. The ground along the wall had been gradually raised by urban deposits: half a century ago the layer of fill beside the Dmitrievskaya Tower reached six metres — the wall here is twice as tall as it appears.[1]

In 1378 a wooden Church of Dmitry of Thessaloniki was built in front of the Dmitrievskaya Tower, and in 1697 a stone Annunciation Cathedral replaced it — a five-domed structure with green-tiled roofing, frescoes on the façade, and a decorative tile border; in 1866 the tiles were replaced with white sheet iron and a bell tower was added.[1] A second church, the Alekseevskaya Church, had stood here since 1641, opposite the present exhibition hall, and gave its name to Alekseevskaya Street.[1] The Alekseevskaya Church was demolished in 1929, and the Annunciation Cathedral in 1930.[1]

Where the Chkalov Monument now stands, there was once a wooden Zachatyevsky Convent; fires destroyed it repeatedly, and in 1840 the dilapidated buildings were taken down, opening the square onto the Otkos.[1] The gateway into the Kremlin between the Georgievskaya and Porokhovaya towers appeared only in 1837, together with the governor's residence that today houses the art museum.[1]

The Regular Plan and Stone Development

Before 1770 the space in front of the tower was built up haphazardly with houses of posad townspeople and their gardens.[3] The first regular plan, which gave the square a trapezoidal form and required that both the square and the adjoining streets be built up exclusively with stone houses, was drawn up in 1770, but for some time remained on paper: the city had no experienced town planners.[3]

Progress began in 1779, when architect Yakov Ananyin took charge of the redevelopment — a son of a St. Petersburg stonemason who had studied construction under Rastrelli and worked on the building of the Winter Palace.[3] In 1782 the ancient fortifications on the square were demolished and the moat was filled in; later, wooden market rows were built on the site, and today the Alekseevsky Ryad complex stands there.[3]

The square was built up with stone buildings: the Bugrov house with its balconies and grand entrance (replaced today by the Palace of Labor), the merchant Volkov's house with its postal station, hotel, and shop, the house of commercial councillor Perepletchikovа, the city gymnasium building — now a faculty of the Pedagogical University — and the Main Upper Market House of the City Society, which today contains the Nizhny Novgorod State Exhibition Complex.[3]

Behind the Kremlin on the south-eastern side lies the Blagoveshchenskaya, or Upper Market Square, forming an irregular semicircle… The square is not large, but one rarely encounters its like in provincial cities: all the buildings surrounding it are of stone and very handsome…

— Nikolai Khramtsovsky, historian of Nizhny Novgorod[3]

The Fountain

By the mid-19th century the growing city lacked clean water, and in 1844 Governor-General Urusov decided to establish a centralised water supply. The project was designed by hydraulic engineer Andrei Delvig, and the equipment was manufactured at the Shepelev factories in Vyksa.[1] The laying of the waterworks building and fountain took place on 1 July 1846.[1]

Water from eighteen springs brought to the surface was collected through wooden pipes into a brick reservoir at the junction of the Kazansky Descent and the Georgievsky Descent, where a pumping station with two steam engines was located; from there it was raised uphill through four cast-iron pipes to the fountain, built to the north of the Annunciation Cathedral. The waterworks supplied 40,000 buckets per day, and townspeople drew water directly from the fountain.[1] It began operating on 1 October 1847.[4]

In 1930 the fountain was moved to its present location.[1] In 1990 it underwent reconstruction.[4] Today it is the city's principal water attraction: the systems are in working order, lighting comes on in the evening, and the jets play to music; before winter the water is pumped out, the pumps are flushed, and a protective structure is installed over it.[5]

Monuments

In 1895 the City Duma resolved to erect a monument to Alexander II on one of the city's finest squares, funded by municipal revenue and voluntary donations. The design was approved in 1901, when a circular raised platform one and a half to two metres high and a granite pedestal were constructed; the bronze figure of the emperor in an ermine mantle was cast at the Moran factory in St. Petersburg, and the unveiling took place in June 1906.[1] After the October Revolution the figure was removed, and in the early 1930s the pedestal and platform were demolished along with the churches.[1]

In 1940 a monument to aviator Valery Chkalov, the work of sculptor Isaak Mendelevich, was erected on the Otkos.[1] In November 1943, in the midst of the war, the first monument to Kuzma Minin — the work of Aleksandr Kolobov — appeared at the Dmitrievskaya Tower, placed there to raise the spirits of the people of Gorky. The sculpture was made of impermanent materials — reinforced concrete with a bronze coating — and over time began to deteriorate.[1]

In 1985 the old monument was dismantled and, after restoration, installed in Balakhna, Minin's birthplace, while in 1989 a new monument by Oleg Komov — a bronze figure on a granite pedestal — was erected in its place.[1] In addition, in 1955 a bust of Minin by Andrei Kikin was placed in front of the "First House" at 1 Minin Street.[1]

City Life in the 20th Century

The square was and remains the setting for the city's main public events: people strolled here, books were sold, trams and trolleybuses ran through. During the Great Patriotic War a German aircraft shot down over the city was put on display in the square. In August 1980 an underground pedestrian crossing was being built beneath it.

Projects That Were Never Built

In the mid-1930s the Leningrad institute Giprogor developed a master plan for Gorky under which the then-named Sovetskaya Square was to become circular: this would have required demolishing part of the Kremlin's walls and towers along with structures inside it, with an enormous monument to Yakov Sverdlov to be placed at the centre. The war put an end to these plans.[1]

In 2008 the authorities announced that an underground car park and shopping centre might be built beneath the square by the Kremlin walls. The idea was abandoned fairly quickly, owing to the square's and the Kremlin's historical and architectural significance.[1]

The Square Today

The square remains the tourist centre of Nizhny Novgorod: from here begins the pedestrian Bolshaya Pokrovskaya Street, here stands the The Kremlin with its art museum and museums in the Dmitrievskaya and Kladovaya towers, an exhibition complex is nearby, and from the Otkos there is a view of the Strelka and the expanses beyond the Volga.

In February 2026 the City Hall included in its work schedule the repair of the Georgievsky Descent on the stretch from Minin Square to Nizhne-Volzhskaya Embankment — nearly a kilometre.[6]

See also

Sources

  1. nn.aif.ru — The demolished tsar and the water of 18 springs. 10 facts about Minin and Pozharsky Square (archive)
  2. archives.nobl.ru
  3. Nizhegorodskaya Pravda — Right in the centre: what Rastrelli's pupil did on the main square of Nizhny Novgorod (archive)
  4. autotravel-nn.ru — The fountain on Minin and Pozharsky Square (archive)
  5. V Gorode N — The bowl of oblivion: what Nizhny Novgorod's fountains look like and what is wrong with them (archive)
  6. NIA "Nizhny Novgorod" — Traffic on the Nizhny Novgorod Metro Bridge to be restricted for repairs (archive)