The embankment of Stepan Razin is located on the southern bank of the Volga River in the center of Tver. It stretches for 2 kilometers from the City Garden to the Yunost Stadium. Here you can see the "single facade": the architectural style of St. Petersburg, when buildings are built close to each other without aisles.
From the 13th to the 17th century, the historical center was built up with wooden houses. In 1763, a devastating fire broke out in Tver, when the entire central part of the city burned down, including the wooden Tver Kremlin. After this fire, Catherine II approved a new layout of the city, prepared by architects Peter Nikitin and Fyodor Stengel. Instead of the Kremlin, she ordered the construction of a Travel palace with gardens around it.
In some areas, the layout of St. Petersburg was used. It looks most beautiful on the Embankment of Stepan Razin. During one of the visits after the restoration of the city, Catherine II said: "Tver is the second most beautiful city of the empire after St. Petersburg."
In the 16th century, the Embankment of Stepan Razin was simply called the City Embankment of Tver. It was named after Stepan Razin only in 1923. The personality of Stepan Razin in modern historiography is not unambiguous. He`s a rebel, and a lot of people have died because of him. However, in the early 1920s, the Bolsheviks named streets after people who, in their opinion, fought against the tsarist government.
In 1769, architects Nikitin and Stengel implemented the architectural solution of the "single facade" on the embankment of Stepan Razin. Two-storey houses from No. 6 to No. 10, and then from No. 11 to No. 16, are built close to each other, and have a single facade 300 meters long. There is a Student lane between them. The facades of these houses are painted in different colors, and the decor is made in the classical style. In those years, the fashion for it replaced the Baroque. These houses can only be entered through the arches.
Another famous building on the Embankment of Stepan Razin near the Novovolzhsky Bridge is the Voroshilovsky Shooters House. This monumental five-storey house in the Stalinist Empire style was built in 1935. In 1938-40, the house housed the headquarters of the Kalinin Military District, then the Military Pedagogical Institute. Subsequently, officers of the Air Defense Military Academy lived in the house.
