Aleksin is located in the northwestern part of the Tula region.
Administrative center of the Aleksinsky district of the region. Aleksin
is an industrial city, there are few tourists and travelers here. Some
are attracted by the nature of the Oka with its pine forest, where the
creative intelligentsia liked to relax in their summer dachas. On the
other hand, the concentration of industrial development on the right
bank of the Oka made it possible to preserve the integral image of the
county town on the left.
Aleksin is located on both banks of the
Oka River, the two parts of the city are connected by two bridges, the
only ones for many kilometers up and down the river.
The city
center, oddly enough, is defined in the middle of the low left bank
part, partly because the bulk of the residential neighborhoods formed
from working settlements are located here, the largest and most famous
of which is Sotsgorod. The main industrial enterprises connected by
railway tracks are also located here.
However, travelers who want
to see something interesting have nothing to do on the left bank. The
historical part of the city of Old Aleksin is called Zarechye and is
located on the right high bank of the Oka. Historical and private
buildings predominate here.
All Orthodox organizations in the city are part of the Belyov
diocese. It is worth highlighting the oldest Old Assumption (1688) and
New Assumption Cathedrals (1813), and St. Nicholas Church (1787).
The
city has a local history museum, opened in a historical building - the
mansion of the merchant Maslov, which is a monument of historical and
cultural heritage of federal significance.
Next to Aleksin there is a
significant monument of estate classicism - the former estate of the
princes Tyufyakin “Petrovskoye” (1773). In the 19th century it belonged
to the Romeiko-Gurko family. Lately it has been in ruins.
In the
village of Kolosovo in the Aleksin urban district there is the
Chertkov-Paskhalov estate, the only one in the Tula region built in the
Gothic style. Currently it is in unsatisfactory condition. Volunteers
regularly hold cleanup days on the estate.
The war memorial Mound of
Glory is located near the city.
Aleksin is located in the northwestern corner of the region on the
banks of the Oka between the regional Tula and Kaluga. It would seem
that such a location should make Aleksin an important transport hub.
However, to get to the city you need to plan your route quite carefully.
By train
The city is located on the railway line that connects
Kaluga and Tula. From Monday to Thursday, three pairs of uncoordinated
trains depart from Aleksin: one each to Kaluga, and through Tula’s
Ryazhsky station (30 minutes by transport from Moskovsky station) to
Uzlovaya and Urvanka (for the summer of 2013). Morning and evening of
these trains include an overnight stay in Aleksin (including all from/to
Kaluga). On Fridays and weekends, two pairs of accelerated trains are
added from Kaluga to Tula's Moskovsky station during the day (one of the
pairs goes to Uzlovaya). An alternative way to get there by rail is to
go to Tula, from where there are many minibuses to Aleksin, Tarusskaya
(then 3 buses daily) or Serpukhov (2 buses on Fridays and weekends).
Train Station.
By car
Aleksin is easily accessible from
the M2 highway, from which there are several exits to local roads. The
distance from the highway to the city will be about 30-40 kilometers.
Following a regional road repair program, local roads are two-lane and
in good condition. Entrance to the city is carried out from the eastern
side of the city, the entrance highways smoothly turn into Tulskaya
Street, which leads to a circle in the historical center and then to a
road bridge on the opposite part of the bank. There are several gas
stations of well-known companies in the city. There are no problems with
parking; travel on some streets in the historical part of the city is
limited by signs. Parking lots are located near the churches, a large
one near the St. Nicholas Church, a small one near the Assumption
Cathedrals, however. to get to the latter, you need to drive through the
active market.
Inexplicably, transport accessibility by car from
the western part of the city is extremely poorly resolved. There is no
obvious road to Ferzikovo and further to Kaluga and is not in sight.
There is an option to take country roads from the Kaluga-Tarusa highway,
take the exit to Parsukovo (the northern suburb of Aleksin) ten
kilometers from Tarusa. It is recommended to try your luck in dry
weather or on an SUV.
By bus
Intercity bus service connects
Aleksin with Tula, Moscow and Serpukhov. There are buses from Tula to
Aleksin from the bus station and from the Yuzhnaya bus station. From
Moscow - minibuses from the metro stations Dmitry Donskoy Boulevard and
Krasnogvardeyskaya.
Bus station.
On the ship
From
Kaluga during the navigation period by boat twice a day, departure from
Kaluga in the morning, from Aleksin back in the late afternoon.
There are 12 bus routes in the city.
Hypermarket Magnit, st. Bolotova 8 building 3. from 9:00 to 21:00.
Hypermarket Spar, st. 50 years of October.
Hypermarket Magnit, sh.
Generala Korotkova, 2. ☎ 8-800-200-90-02. from 8:00 to 22:00.
Average cost
Hotel "Oka", st. Revolutions, no. 9. ☎ +7 (48753)
6-77-40.
Hotel "Salut", Bolotova str., 18. Around the clock.
According to legend, he was named by the Moscow prince Daniil Alexandrovich after his son Alexander (from the derivative form of Alex, Alex). Sometimes the name is associated with the name of Metropolitan Alexei, to whom the city was given for feeding in 1354.
According to legend, Aleksin was founded at the end of the 13th
century by the first Moscow prince Daniil Alexandrovich, the youngest
son of Alexander Nevsky, but the official date of birth of Aleksin is
considered to be 1348, under which it was first mentioned in the Nikon
Chronicle.
There are also documents confirming the “purchase” of
Aleksin by Metropolitan Peter of Kyiv and All Rus'. The date of the
“purchase” is not specified, but it could not have happened later than
1326 (the year of the death of Metropolitan Peter) - this date was also
used for a long time as the starting point for the history of Aleksin.
The founding date of 1236 found in some sources is caused by a typo in
the date “1326” in one of the encyclopedias of the early 20th century
and is not confirmed in the sources.
Aleksin was the patrimony of
the metropolitans of Kyiv and all Rus' from the moment of its purchase
by Metropolitan Peter (no later than 1326) until the early 1390s, when
the Moscow prince Vasily Dmitrievich exchanged it from Metropolitan
Cyprian for the Korash settlement. Later, the city belonged to the
Mozhaisk prince Ivan Andreevich, but Vasily II bequeathed it to his son
as a grand-ducal possession.
In 1472, Khan of the Great Horde
Akhmat entered Russian soil with significant forces. Moscow did not know
exactly where Akhmat was heading and therefore took the usual
precautions. In this regard, on July 29, 1472, the enemy was able to
approach the wooden fortress - the city of Aleksin - almost unhindered.
The Alexinians selflessly began to fight the enemy. Chroniclers who
described the battle for Aleksin noted the heroism and courage of the
townspeople: “... the citizens bravely defended themselves and beat many
Tatars. Soon, however, there was nothing left to defend with; there was
neither an arrow nor a spear left,” writes historian S. M. Solovyov. On
July 30, the Tatars set fire to the fortress, but the townspeople
bravely defended themselves; The merit of the Aleksinites is that it was
they who held back the superior enemy forces for two days. During the
time that the battle of Aleksin was going on, Ivan III managed to send
troops to defend Moscow.
The historical novel “The Forerunner”
(1987) by the St. Petersburg writer and military historian I. N.
Loschilov is dedicated to the heroic defense of Aleksin from the army of
the Golden Horde Khan Akhmat in 1472.
After the events of 1472,
Aleksin throughout the XV-XVI centuries remained an important outpost of
the “Berega” - a defensive system created along the Oka from Kolomna to
Kaluga to repel Tatar raids. In 1492, “the Totarovs came to Ukraine to
the Oleksinsky places.”
During the period of formation and
strengthening of a single centralized Russian state, Aleksin was the
location of the grand ducal “regiment of the right hand.” In 1566, it
was assigned to the personal possessions of Ivan IV the Terrible, as a
result of which it became the only city on the right bank of the Oka
that was included in the oprichnina.
During the Time of Troubles
at the beginning of the 17th century, Aleksin took part in events
related to the uprising of I. I. Bolotnikov of 1606-1607. Taking the
side of the rebels, the city was taken by storm by the troops of Vasily
Shuisky on July 29, 1607. Then it was subjected to new devastation by
the Polish-Lithuanian invaders.
By the early 1650s, only about
450 people lived in Aleksin.
In 1728, near Aleksin on the Myshega
River, the Mosolov brothers built the first ironworks, which later
acquired the name “Tyazhpromarmatura”.
On July 13, 1768, the city
almost completely burned down. After the fire, regular construction
began to take shape there.
In 1777, Aleksin received the official
status of a district town of the Aleksinsky district of the Tula
governorate (since 1796 - the Tula province).
The city began to
actively develop in the 19th-20th centuries, when it became the center
of the sawmill and metallurgical industry, and also after the
construction of the Kaluga-Tula railway in the mid-19th century. In
1873, the Myshega plant built a water supply system to compensate for
the losses caused to the city.
In 1891, A.P. Chekhov vacationed
in Aleksin, where his brother worked as a tax inspector, at one of the
“Kovrigin dachas,” from where he went to visit L.N. Tolstoy, and L.
Mizinova and I. Levitan. In May of the same year he moved to an estate
in the village. Bogimovo west of Aleksin.
On January 18 (31),
1918, Soviet power was established in Aleksin and Aleksinsky district.
In 1924, during the zoning of the Tula province, four districts
(enlarged volosts) were formed in the Aleksinsky district: Aleksinsky,
Nenashevsky, Popovsky and Serpukhovsky; at the same time, Aleksin became
the center of the Aleksinsky district (later the districts were
consolidated). On December 1, 1924, the Aleksinsky district was
abolished, and the Aleksinsky district came under provincial
subordination. In 1929, the Tula province was transformed into the Tula
district of the newly formed Central Industrial (from June 3 - Moscow)
region; however, on August 21, 1930, the Tula District was liquidated,
and the Aleksinsky District became directly subordinate to the Moscow
Region. Finally, on September 26, 1937, by a resolution of the Central
Executive Committee of the USSR, the Tula Region was separated from the
Moscow Region, into which Aleksin and the Aleksinsky District were
transferred.
In 1933, the government decided to build a chemical
plant (plant No. 100) in the Moscow region, which included Aleksin. On
March 27, 1941, the first thermal power plant was put into operation,
and at the end of May, workshop No. 3 of plant No. 100 was put into
operation.
During the Great Patriotic War, Aleksin played an important strategic role. On October 14, 1941, after the German troops occupied Kaluga, the 238th Infantry Division was transferred to the area of the city of Aleksin to defend it and prevent a breakthrough on the Moscow-Tula road. German troops managed to occupy the city for a while, but it was liberated on December 17, 1941.
On July 12, 1958, by decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of
the RSFSR, the city of Aleksin was classified as a city of regional
subordination; At the same time, the working villages of Vysokoye,
Myshega and Petrovsky were included in the city limits.
The
city's heyday came in the 1970s, when the Chemical Combine reached its
greatest development, becoming the largest producer of gunpowder. During
this period, the Bor microdistrict was built up and the Zhalka park was
opened in the Gorushka microdistrict. The Myshega plant was reoriented
to produce shut-off valves for the oil and gas industry.
On
January 11, 2011, the old bridge over the Oka River was opened after
reconstruction, and car traffic in Aleksin began to flow along two
bridge spans.
The climate is moderate continental, characterized by well-defined seasons: moderately warm summers and moderately cold winters. The average temperature in January is −7.0°C, in July +18.3°C. The warm period (with a positive average daily temperature) lasts 220-225 days. The lowest temperature was observed in January 1940 (Kolosovo village), dropping to −48.5°C, the highest according to observations from the M-2 Aleksin meteorological station was +38.9°C on August 2, 2010. The first frosts are observed at the end of September, the last - in early May. The frost-free period is on average 140 days. Snow cover is established in mid-November, disappears in mid-April, remains for about 140 days, reaching its greatest height (on average 36 cm) in February - March. The depth of soil freezing is up to 1.5 m. From November to February, winds from the south and southeast prevail. From April to September the wind regime is unstable, with a slight predominance of southern and western directions. The average annual wind speed is 2.9 m/s. Atmospheric precipitation is distributed more or less evenly throughout the year. Annual precipitation for the period 1981–2010. is 653.4 mm. The average annual relative humidity is 79%.
In 2021, the city became the location for the filming of the film “The First Oscar” directed by Sergei Mokritsky, which tells the story of the feat of front-line documentary directors Leonid Varlamov and Ilya Kopalin, whose documentary “The Defeat of German Troops near Moscow” received the first Oscar in the history of the Soviet Union.