Kungur

Kungur is a city in the Russian Federation, the district center of the Perm region, located in the Pre-Urals, at the confluence of the Ireni and Shakva rivers into the Sylva River (Kama basin), 101 km southeast of Perm. The population is 75 thousand people (2001). Kungur was founded on the Kungurka River in 1648, 17 km above the mouth of the Irene River. In 1662, the city was burned by the Bashkirs, and in 1663 it was moved to a modern place (the former village of Mysovskoye) and rebuilt as a fortress. The name of the city is supposedly associated with the Turkic "ungur (unkur)" - "cave, cliff, crevice in the rocks."
In 1774, Kungur withstood the siege of the troops of Emelyan Pugachev. In the early 18th century, leather and footwear production was born here. By the middle of the 18th century, Kungur was one of the largest settlements in the Urals. Since 1759 in Kungur was the Perm management of mining plants. By the end of the 18th century, Kungur was an important point of transit trade on the Siberian highway. In Russia, kungur rope and flaxseed oil were known.
At the beginning of the 20th century, there were twenty temples in Kungur, of which the five-domed Transfiguration Church (1781) with an octagonal bell tower with a height of 36 m and a refectory, as well as the St. Nicholas Church of 1917, made in pseudo-Russian style, were preserved. The monuments of civil architecture of Kungur include the Gostiny Dvor (1865-1876) with an open outer arcade, the building of the city government (1867), Zyryanovskaya almshouse (1881), the hospital building of the late 19th century, the Acheevs' dacha (late 19th century, now a children's sanatorium). In the city, an obelisk was installed for Pugachev's detachments - participants in the siege of Kungur in 1773-1774.
On the outskirts of Kungur on the right bank of the Salva is the Kungur Ice Cave - a karst formation. Its total length is 5.6 km, the cave has 58 grottoes and about 60 lakes. The Kungur cave, especially its grottoes such as "Diamond", "Polar" and "Dante", attract tourists and speleologists throughout Russia. Near the cave is Ermakovskoe settlement 8-9 centuries AD. In the Kungur district there is a botanical reserve Spasskaya Gora, in which areas of the Kungur island forest-steppe are preserved. Not far from Kungur, on the high bank of Kama, is the only architectural and ethnographic museum-reserve in the Urals "Khokhlovka". Here from the north of the region were transported wooden buildings of the 17-19 centuries. Every summer, folklore festivals are held on the territory of the open-air museum.