Culture
As early as the 16th century, Kaluga was a major commercial port acting as a connecting link between Lithuania and Moscow. Back then, the city exported wooden utensils known far beyond the provincial boundaries. Starting in the 1680s, stone churches were built on the sites of wooden churches. By the latter half of the 18th century, there were 183 stone and 2235 wooden buildings in Kaluga. The 17th century Korobov mansion with its semidomes and patterned cornices is a fine example of the civil architecture of the period. Many other buildings of so-called "workplaces" have also been preserved. These include several administrative buildings connected by arches e.g. the Zolotarev town estate, the Bilibin merchant mansion, and the Inn Court comprising several trading houses designed by the famous architect P.R. Nikitin.
Read more about this topic: Kaluga Oblast
Famous quotes containing the word culture:
“As the twentieth century ends, commerce and culture are coming closer together. The distinction between life and art has been eroded by fifty years of enhanced communications, ever-improving reproduction technologies and increasing wealth.”
—Stephen Bayley (b. 1951)
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“One of the oddest features of western Christianized culture is its ready acceptance of the myth of the stable family and the happy marriage. We have been taught to accept the myth not as an heroic ideal, something good, brave, and nearly impossible to fulfil, but as the very fibre of normal life. Given most families and most marriages, the belief seems admirable but foolhardy.”
—Jonathan Raban (b. 1942)