Norman's Blog: Astrakhan

Astrakhan

It was a brilliant sunrise over the Volga delta as the sun road above Astrakhan.

A thin mist obscured another ship moored not far from us.

The mist also obscured the shore to the west.

But there was some traffic about an as the mist cleared, it revealed a multitude of small fishing boats, often just inflatable dinghies, out in the middle of the river, doing some dawn fishing. You have to be brave to weather both the cold and large ships going past.

Some ships don't always take the right channel and run aground so the fishermen have to be weary.

A tree at the passenger terminal decorated with some guerrilla crocheting.

After a coach tour around the city, we got off to walk through the kremlin. The main tower and gate into the kremlin with the cathedral in the back ground. A city existed for many centuries but it was destroyed in 1396 by Timurlane. The city was refounded in 1558 after the khanate here was defeated by Ivan the Terrible and the area incorporated into the Russian Empire.

The tower isn't the original as the first was built of wood and destroyed by fire. The next two towers were built of brick and stone but started to lean and were pulled down and rebuilt. This one was built in 1906 but also needed some reinforcing to correct a lean.

One of the corner towers. The kremlin was built on the top of a hill and the hill has a triangular shape so the kremlin also has a triangular shape.

The main entry tower and the cathedral to the right.

The sun glistening off the golden crosses of another church within the kremlin.

The main entrance to the cathedral.

A detailed view of the main entrance.

Inside the summer church of the cathedral.

Inside the lower, winter church of the cathedral underneath the summer church.

But despite being a traditional style, there are modern decorations such as seen in the lower half of the walls of this corner of the church.

Another gate viewed from the inside. St Cyrus is buried nearby to this gate and it is he that is responsible for creating the Russian alphabet, hence Cyrillic. It had only been a spoken language but when he came to write it down, he used one letters for each of the major alphabets such as Latin, Hebrew and Greek, plus a few that he invented himself.