About Novosibirsk

• See also: RT's TV story about Novosibirsk (March 2010).

Novosibirsk is the third largest city in Russia after Moscow and Saint-Petersburg. It is also the youngest city to exceed the population of a million citizens, being founded in 1893. Here is some statistics related to the city:

Population (in 2006): 1,397,000 people
Size: 500 km²
International area code: +7 383
Time zone: UTC+6 (in winter), UTC+7 (in summer)
Position according to Geographical Reference System: 55°01′N 82°56′E (see Novosibirsk map)
Living standards (according to the research by Mercer Human Resource Consulting, 2007): 184^th place among the cities with population above 1 mln people on a global scale; 2^nd among Russian cities. 

Novosibirsk is full of advertisments and japanese cars. Photo by Slava Stepanov

Today Novosibirsk is:

• The business-center of Siberia. It explains its business-tourism orientation as well as the abundance of exhibition pavilions and an extensively developed publicity market.
• A major transportation junction. Here, waterways lying through the Ob River join airways ending in Tolmachevo airport and two small local airports. Intercity highways meet railways, Novosibirsk having been initially built to serve as an important railroad junction of the Trans-Siberian Railway. Despite all this, the city’s road infrastructure is currently being reconstructed due to its inability to cope with the growing traffic load. Read about this more in detail in the Transport section.
• A scientific center. Akademgorodok is a major scientific center comprising Novosibirsk State University and dozens of scientific laboratories and institutes. It was founded in 1950 and since then it has managed to become an integral part of the city like its other areas, though it still bears its own marks of distinction, such as beautiful parks and forests, beaches, safe and quiet streets, many youngsters.  Exñept Akademgorodok there are several smaller but still effective scientific and technological cluster - Koltsovo (or Kolcovo - virology) and Vashnil (agricultural science).
• Ex-center of industry. There were launched many factories in the Novosibirsk region under the Soviets despite the lack of precious mineral resources. Even more of the factories were evacuated here from the battlefields of WWII. Many of them are closed now, but industrial atmospehere is still could be felt in some districts of Novosibirsk.
• Novosibirsk can be called the cultural center of Siberia - with some restrictions, though. Traditionally, theater has been the best-developed kind of cultural distraction here, but the city is large enough to provide many other ways of spending an evening or a weekend. Learn about them at ‘Where to Go in the City’ section.

Night view on one of the city bridges, Transsibirean railroad and several new building near Sibir' Hotel. Photo by Dmitry Molchanov

In last years, Novosibirsk finally got away from after-Perestroyka troubles and became very thriving city. Today more attention is paid for business, science and transports. Most of the roads are reconstructed, new highways in Novosibirsk region were built, the project of building third city bridge over the Ob' river has alredy started. After renovation Tolmachevo Airport (OVB, Novosibirsk) opened more international flights, it is still home airport for one of the Russia's biggest airlines - S7, and now it is thought to be 2nd in Russia by comfort (after Domodedovo Airport, Moscow).

Novosibirsk was in its building boom, when so-called global financial crisis began. Now real estate development is quite complicated. Nevertheless, Novosibirsk region suffers less from crisis (comparing to the rest of Siberia), because of it's diversified economy (mainly it is result of near absolut absence of oil, gas or other industrial minerals).

You can also enjoy another related section made for your amusement and entitled ‘Myths and Facts about Novosibirsk’.

The Opera And Ballet theatre - one of the city's main symbols. Photo by Dmitry Molchanov