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🔭 Borovsk: The city where the journey into space began

Friends, today we are traveling to Kaluga Oblast, more precisely, to a small town on the Protva River. At first glance, Borovsk looks like a sleepy provincial town with old merchants’ houses and monasteries. Yet this is where Old Believer faith, merchants’ wealth, and the first ideas of space exploration came together.

Welcome to Borovsk!

👨‍🏫 The young teacher who kept his eyes on the stars

In January 1880, a 23-year-old arrived in Borovsk: Konstantin Tsiolkovsky. He had just passed his teaching examination and received his first position as a teacher of arithmetic and geometry at the district school.

He stayed for twelve years. He lived in the house of the merchant M. I. Pomukhina on what was then Kruglaya Street (today, 49 Tsiolkovsky Street). The house has survived to this day and has housed a museum since 1997.

But Borovsk was more than just a professional stop for Tsiolkovsky. It was here that he began his first scientific works: the “Theory of Gases” (1880–1881), as well as writings on the “Mechanics of the Animal Organism” and the “Duration of Solar Radiation.”

In 1883, he produced his work “Free Space,” with the crucial realization that movement by recoil is also possible in the vacuum of outer space. An early step toward theoretical spaceflight.

Tsiolkovsky also thought about dirigibles and airplanes – long before they became a reality.

🕯️ A place where people died for their old faith

Long before Tsiolkovsky, Borovsk was a center of Russian Old Belief. In the 17th century, two women were imprisoned here who became among the best-known martyrs of the Old Believers: Boyarynya Feodosiya Morozova and her sister, Princess Yevdokiya Urusova.

They were followers of Archpriest Avvakum and refused to accept the church reforms of Patriarch Nikon. In 1675, both died of hunger in prison. A chapel at the site of their imprisonment still commemorates the two women.

🎨 The man who painted the city

Vladimir Ovchinnikov was not a professional artist but worked as an engineer and economist. After retiring in the 1990s, he began to paint. And not on canvas, but on the city’s walls.

With the consent of the homeowners and the city administration, he created around one hundred murals, including scenes from city life, portraits of Tsiolkovsky and Gogol, as well as the “Globe of Borovsk” and the “Space Ship.”

His best-known work is the “Ovchinnikov Space Cruiser”: a spaceship on the wall of a building. Through it, he connected the city’s history with the idea of space exploration.

Ovchinnikov died in 2026, but his murals remain an “open-air museum” to this day.

🏛️ The city itself

Borovsk has been known since the 14th century. One of its landmarks is the Pafnutius-Borovsk Monastery, founded in 1444 by Saint Pafnutius. The “Gostinye Ryady,” the old trading arcades, still define the city center today. Along Uspenskaya Street stand merchants’ houses from the 18th and 19th centuries.

Thus, within a small area, Borovsk brings together the traditions of the Old Believers, the world of merchants, Tsiolkovsky’s ideas, and the extraordinary murals of a modern artist.


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📍 The coordinates of the location: available here

💥 Our channel: Node of Time EN