When visiting Vologda, you definitely need to plan walks through the streets of the old city to get acquainted with the Wooden architecture of Vologda. There are many wooden houses of the 19th century with a beautiful decoration of windows and eaves of roofs. The wooden architecture of Vologda is as well known in Russia as the Wooden architecture of Tomsk.
The city of Vologda, like Tomsk, has been built up with wooden houses for several centuries. At the beginning of the 16th century, stone temples of the Spaso-Prilutsky Monastery were built in Vologda, and the stone St. Sophia Cathedral was erected under Ivan the Terrible. In the 17th-18th century, the architectural ensemble of the Bishop`s Court was formed, which is now called the Vologda Kremlin. All its buildings are also built in stone.
However, until the 1960s, the absolute majority of buildings in Vologda remained wooden. Many of these wooden houses have been preserved, and today we can see the beauty and authenticity of Vologda`s wooden architecture.
The most interesting houses of wooden architecture in Vologda have been preserved on the streets of Zasodimsky, Leningradskaya, Maltsev, Blagoveshchenskaya. There are also interesting houses in the Zarechny district, on the streets of Chernyshevsky, Gogol and on the Vologda Embankment. In total, more than 100 houses have been preserved in Vologda, built in various architectural styles from classical to modern.
By the end of the 19th century, Vologda had developed a special style of wooden architecture, which was used by local craftsmen. A mandatory element of the Vologda house design is a corner loggia above the entrance porch.
The platbands on the windows, as well as the cornices under the roofs were decorated with beautiful wood carvings. Vologda carvers have achieved great skill in this. The craft of lace weaving, popular in Vologda, had some influence on the spread of wood carving. Now samples of lace weaving can be seen in the Vologda Lace Museum.
