Russia/Beautiful Irkutsk (Heart of Siberia) Part 19
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Irkutsk/Иркутск
Irkutsk, is a city and the administrative center of Irkutsk Oblast, Russia, and one of the largest cities in Siberia. Population:650.000
The city proper lies on the Angara River, a tributary of the Yenisei, 72 kilometers (45 mi) below its outflow from Lake Baikal and on the bank opposite the suburb of Glaskovsk. The river, 580-meter (1,900 ft) wide, is crossed by the Irkutsk Hydroelectric Dam and three other bridges downstream.
The Irkut River, from which the town takes its name, is a smaller river that joins the Angara directly opposite the city. The main portion of the city is separated from several landmarks—the monastery, the fort and the port, as well as its suburbs—by another tributary, the Ida (or Ushakovka) River. The two main parts of Irkutsk are customarily referred to as the left bank and the right bank, with respect to the flow of the Angara River.
Irkutsk is situated in a landscape of rolling hills within the thick taiga that is typical in Eastern Siberia.
According to the regional plan, Irkutsk city will be combined with its neighboring industrial towns of Shelekhov and Angarsk to form a metropolitan area with a total population of over a million.
Irkutsk is the administrative center of the oblast and, within the framework of administrative divisions, it also serves as the administrative center of Irkutsky District, even though it is not a part of it. As an administrative division, it is incorporated separately as the City of Irkutsk an administrative unit with the status equal to that of the districts.[citation needed] As a municipal division, the City of Irkutsk is incorporated as Irkutsk Urban Okrug.
The coat of arms of Irkutsk features an old symbol of Dauria: a Siberian tiger with a sable in his mouth. When the coat of arms was devised in 1690, the animal was described as a tiger (babr, a bookish word of Persian derivation) with a sable in his mouth. This image had been used by the Yakutsk customs office from about 1642. It has its origin in a seal of the Siberia Khanate representing a sable and showcasing the fact that Siberia (or rather Yugra) was the main source of sable fur throughout the Middle Ages. (Actually, the English word sable is derived from the Russian sobol).
By the mid-19th century, the word babr had fallen out of common usage, but it was still recorded in the Armorial of the Russian Empire. Furthermore, the tigers became extinct in this part of Siberia. In the 1870s, a high-placed French heraldist with a limited command of Russian assumed that babr was a misspelling of bobr, the Russian word for beaver, and changed the wording accordingly. This modification engendered a long dispute between the local authorities, who were so confused by the revised description that they started to depict the babr as a fabulous animal, half-tiger and half-beaver.The Soviets abolished the image altogether, but it was restored following the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
Important roads and railways like the Trans-Siberian Highway (Federal M53 and M55 Highways) and Trans-Siberian Railway connect Irkutsk to other regions in Russia and Mongolia. The city is also served by the Irkutsk International Airport and the smaller Irkutsk Northwest Airport.
The Federal road and railway to Moscow and Vladivostok pass through the other side of the Angara River from central Irkutsk.
Trams are one major mode of public transit in Irkutsk. Other modes are trolleybus, bus, and fixed-route taxi, cycling (marshrutka). Irkutsk is characterized by an extreme variation of temperatures between seasons. It can be very warm in the summer, and very cold in the winter. However, Lake Baikal has a tempering effect thanks to which temperatures in Irkutsk are not as extreme as elsewhere in Siberia. The warmest month of the year is July, when the average temperature is +18 °C (64 °F), the highest temperature recorded being +37.2 °C (99.0 °F). The coldest month of the year is January, when the average temperature is −18 °C (0 °F), and record low of −49.7 °C (−57.5 °F). Precipitation also varies widely throughout the year, with July also being the wettest month, when precipitation averages 113 millimeters (4.4 in). The driest month is February, when precipitation averages only 7.6 millimeters (0.30 in). Almost all precipitation during the Siberian winter falls as flurry, dry snow.Wikipedia