Summer routes

Founder of the fleet and the spa industry

Almost on the day of the 350th anniversary of the birth of Peter I, I visited Pereslavl-Zalessky, the town where in 1688 the 16-year-old tsar began to realize his dream of building a Russian military fleet with perseverance and diligence. For several years, a real flotilla of various ships was built here, among which a 30-gun frigate was. And the maneuvers of the flotilla on the Lake Pleshcheevo under the volleys of ship cannons and the ringing of the bells of the Pereslavl churches became the birth of the Russian navy.

After 30 years, having found himself passing through Pereslavl and finding those very ships in a deplorable state, Peter ordered by his decree to take care of the "amusing flotilla". They were gathered in the city center under a canopy and guarded. And after another 60 years, when the emperor was no longer alive, there was a fire that destroyed the ships assembled together. Only a separately stored bot survived.

At the beginning of the 19th century, the Pereslavl nobility raised funds for the construction of capital buildings to store the boat "Fortune" and everything that was left of the "Petrov's house". On 1 August, 1803, the boat was solemnly transferred to a new building and thus one of the first provincial museums in the Russian Empire was opened.

In the 2000s, Pereslavl began to grow with various, small, but charming private museums: Alexander Nevsky, iron, radio, gramophones and phonograph records, sewing machines, sewing art, steam locomotives. There is a museum of proverbs and sayings, a tea museum and a teapot house, a museum of cunning and ingenuity. Let's take a look at the last one.

The Museum of Cunning and Ingenuity was formed as a museum of crafts representing the main occupations of local people - fishing, hunting and farming. The museum exhibits models and specimens of ancient plows, ploughs and harrows, hunting and fishing traps and devices. Gradually, the museum was replenished with various items of peasant life, ingeniously curious exhibits that solid polytechnic museums cannot boast of. The guide, in an accessible form of jokes, will explain the principle of operation of glass traps for mice and flies, show how simple and reliable mechanical devices work - cherry pit removers and devices that not only cut the apple core, but also cut the skin from an apple of any size that is impossible to do by modern kitchen units. The museum exhibits a bottle-refrigerator for wine, various irons - coal, gas, separate miniature ones for cuffs, special ones - for pleating fabric. There is also a dream of any frequenter of museums and exhibitions - a light cane that turns into a small chair with one movement of the hand. And there are also interesting old bottle openers, nutcrackers, shoe removers, drinkers for bedridden patients, forks with telescopic handles, teapots with two spouts to serve the tavern visitors faster. And even a porcelain miracle - cups with an ornately shaped stand (or a shelf?) for a mustache, so that the owners of lush mustaches do not wet them when drinking tea. A tour conducted lively, with humor, when many of the exhibits are in the hands of visitors, adds points to the rating of this museum.

And in the end we will return to Peter I again. His last anniversary added to Pereslavl-Zalessky, if not another attraction, then at least a place for a selfie. In front of the Pereslavl spa hotel Pierre Le Grand, a bust of the emperor, "the founder of the spa industry" was installed. This is a replica of the monument built in the Belgian city of Spa, the healing springs of which Peter visited on the appointment of his physician in ordinary.

Olga TARANTINA, photo of the author,
Pereslavl-Zalessky - Dubna