Archaeology handicrafts and science and technology sites to visit Russia

With a depth of 65 m, it is the main interest of Yantarny. While only 1,000 tons of amber were extracted during the Soviet period, today the mine has reached a production of 300,000 tons per year. 25 % of the extracted amber is used in the manufacture of jewellery. The rest is processed for use in welding, painting and medicine. More than 300 colours characterise Baltic amber and 1 ^{m3 of} amber can exceed one million dollars.

Already in the imperial era, one of the largest factories in Moscow, Einem, was located in the western part of Bolotny Island, producing sugar and later chocolate, and even supplying the imperial family. Its image was so much a part of the capital's landscape that it is said that at the same time when London was sinking into the stench and smog caused by its own factories, Moscow smelled of chocolate. After the revolution, the chocolate factory was expropriated by the Soviets who renamed it "Red October", a curiously appropriate name for its brick building. The complex was expanded and the brand became a symbol of socialism, so much so that when the Second World War broke out, Red October chocolate was in the rations of all soldiers. After this episode, it was distributed throughout the USSR and children raised in this period have all known these sweets.

Red October is today a bit like the Soho of Moscow. When Red October, now a private company, moved out of Moscow in 2007, they wanted to preserve its heritage. Work has turned the place into a cultural cluster that now includes restaurants, galleries, nightclubs, Strelka urban planning institute and offices that have created a vibrant local culture. There is still a remnant of the industrial past of the place: a small industrial store Alenka remains at the tip of the island, with its saleswomen, their regulation apron and its ridiculously low prices.

one can see, from a boat and with the help of binoculars, a memorial to the discovery of "Pallaçovo gélézo" (the Pallas iron). In October 1771, the great Russian explorer of Siberia, Peter Pallas, of German origin (1741-1811) arrived in Krasnoyarsk. He ordered his collection, all his travel diaries and completed them with archival material. In 1772, a convoy of a few trolleys loaded with collections ores, animals and birds headed from Krasnoyarsk to St. Petersburg. The convoy consisted of solid sleds with a metal block with a weight of 700 kg. This block, on the rough surface covered with a thin crust, and with the form of giant egg, was a gift from the blacksmith Jacov Medvédev, who found it on the dividing line of the waters of the rivers Oubey and Sicime, tributaries rights of the Yenisey. The blacksmith, who had transported him to his yard, attacked him with his entire heart without succeeding in forging it. For 22 years, the mysterious bloc remained in the yard. P. Pallas heard about and sent a man to buy it. But the blacksmith gave the block free and even built special sleds to move it to the capital. The enigmatic object received the name of the "Pallas iron" and its mystery was decrypted in 1794 by the Czech scientist, Ernst Chladni, who said it was a meteorite, the first found and studied in Russia. The peasant blacksmith J. Medvédev was decorated by the Russian Academy of Sciences, and his discovery is now visible at the Cabinet Cabinet in Saint Petersburg.