Таруса / Tarusa: 1900s

Россия в дореволюционных фотографиях
Таруса
Калужская область
1900-х годов

Russia in pre-revolutionary photographs
Tarusa
Kaluga Oblast
1900s

Music:
Melody in F Major Op. 3 No.1by Anton Rubinstein

The ancient town of Tarusa is located on high ground at the confluence of the Tarusa and Oka Rivers, 70 km from Kaluga.
There is no railway, and therefore the town was less susceptible to the passage of time and industrialisation. Most of the buildings are one- and two-story houses located on their own plots of land.

The Russian Soviet writer, Konstantin G. Paustovsky wrote of the town:
" I live in one small town on the Oka. It is so small that all its streets go either to the river with its smooth and solemn bends, or to the fields where the wind shakes bread, or in the woods, where spring is in full bloom between the birches and the cherry pines ..."

First mention of the settlement was in 1246....and was under the influence of Lithuania by the early 15th century. However in 1508, after a long struggle, the Lithuanian prince Sigismund was forced to abandon his claims to Tarusa and other settlements around Kaluga.
By the beginning of the XIX century Tarusa had about 600 inhabitants, there were 70 houses, two churches and one small brick factory, where only 10 people worked!

Paustovsky continues ...." Perhaps nowhere near Moscow was not such typically and touchingly Russian in its landscape. For many years, Tarusa has been a kind of reserve for lyrical strength, diversity and softness of the landscape. No wonder since the end of the XIX century Tarusa became a town of artists..." ".....Here every summer comes young people from Moscow's art institutes. Writers and scientists reached for the artists, and Tarusa became a kind of creative laboratory and a shelter for people of art and science......"

Видео Таруса / Tarusa: 1900s канала Nigel Fowler Sutton