Novosibirsk has no kremlin and no medieval quarter — its history starts in 1893 with railway engineers driving piles into the Ob. Follow that story through log-cabin churches, evacuated wartime factories, Akademgorodok's science utopia and monuments to Stalin's victims.
The 1910 red-brick Trading House by architect Andrey Kryachkov holds the region's archaeology: Andronovo bronzes, Scythian-era kurgan finds and the famous Baraba mammoth skeleton. Open Tue-Sun 10:00-18:00, closed Mondays.
Built in 1914 for the Romanov tercentenary and long claimed as the geographic centre of the Russian Empire. Demolished in 1930, rebuilt in 1993 for the city's centenary on Krasny Prospekt. Free entry, small interior.
Founded 1913 as a single-domed log church for the railway settlement and the only city church to stay open through most of the Soviet era. Expanded in the 1970s-80s into the diocesan cathedral; the wooden core survives inside.
Home to finds from the Denisova and Ukok excavations run by Siberian archaeologists, including Pazyryk textiles and Palaeolithic tools. Visits are by prior arrangement on weekdays; ring ahead through the institute.
Over 100 locomotives and carriages on open track at Seyatel station, including armoured wartime stock, a prisoner-transport wagon and pre-revolutionary Trans-Siberian carriages. Open Wed-Sun 11:00-17:00.
A stark memorial stone and wall of names commemorating Novosibirsk residents shot or deported during the 1937-38 Terror, when the city served as a transit hub for Gulag convoys heading further into Siberia.
The 1967 memorial complex lists over 30,000 Novosibirsk war dead on five 10-metre pylons around an eternal flame. The adjoining museum covers the Siberian divisions and the factories evacuated here in 1941.
The plant built Yak fighters from 1941 and later Su-24 and Su-34 jets; a MiG-15 and Yak-9 stand on plinths outside. The surrounding 1930s-50s workers' quarter shows Stalin-era housing built around the factory gates.
Khrushchev's 1957 science city in the pine forest, built by Mikhail Lavrentyev to move Soviet research east. The museum on Morskoy Prospekt covers the founding scientists and the 1968 dissident 'letter of 46' scandal.
The oldest surviving street of the 1890s Novonikolayevsk settlement, where railway navvies built carved log houses. Several pre-1900 izbas still stand between the newer blocks near the Kamenka ravine.
The 1926 constructivist headquarters of the Siberian Revolutionary Committee, another Kryachkov design, now holding Nicholas Roerich's Himalayan cycle and Russian icons. Open Tue-Sun, late opening Thursdays until 20:00.
The 1939 terminal was designed as a stylised steam locomotive in profile, with a 32-metre-high hall. Outside stands preserved steam engine Su 251-16, and plaques mark the evacuation trains that arrived here in 1941-42.