Food and holiday: the image of the Russian Imperial city

Since ancient times, in Russian cities on holidays there were held fairs with a possibility to buy and to sell basic goods: agricultural, handicraft and industrial products, livestock, furs. Before the revolution in 1917, the church calendar was considered as basic holiday calendar. The main holidays of the Russian Empire were: Easter week, Christmas, New Year and Epiphany. Also Maslenitsa or send-off winter, people celebrated fun with traditional Russian bliny (thin pancakes) and with the burning of scarecrow of Morena. In 1834 in Russia there were 1650 seats fairground. According to government decrees the main fairs of the country were: Korennaya, Nizhegorodskaya and Irbitskaya, the other fairground places were common. By decree of Catherine II a new stone Gostiny Dvor was built from 1793 to 1812 on the site of a small wooden Gostiny Dvor of the Korennaya Fair. Taverns and bakeries were located around it in the shopping malls. In the middle of the XIX century there were already located 528 shops, 34 booths and 20 wine cellars. The basis for creating of an architectural ensemble of Nizhegorodskaya Fair was used the plan developed in 1804 by the architect A. Zaharov. Construction was finished and the trade was opened only on the 15 of July 1822. The square in front of the Cathedral, that was also the part of the architectural ensemble, was decorated of the opposite side with Chinese trade rows - four buildings in the spirit of Chinese architecture were designed for traders from Asia. The main product of the market that period was the tea. The duration of the fair was more than a month: flags raised on the 15 of July and droped on the 25 of August. Irbitskaya Fair was held annually in February; during it the population of Irbit greatly increased at the expense of newcomers. Only during the fair in the city acted the Fairground Theater and Circus, the newspaper was published "Fair Irbitskiy sheet". In 1864 Irbitskiy Passage was opened - the main symbol of the fair.