Voronezh is a city where the Gas Sector group is adored and creative industries are vigorously developing. This guide contains the Beat Weekend team’s favorite places: gallery apartments, creative spaces, trendy cafes, streets with street art and atmospheric cemeteries.
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Wood: go to the art apartment
“Give Five” is a three-room apartment in the center of Voronezh, which mimicked an art space. The case when the apartment building accidentally got out of control, and now there is an artists’ workshop, gallery, film club, lecture hall and concert venue at the same time. Anyone can come. The neighbors don’t seem to complain. “High Five” was invented by the heroes of the local street art scene – Misha Goodwin and Yan Posadskikh.
Goodwin creates works at the intersection of the real and the virtual, and the Posadskys are often compared to Banksy in the local media due to their topical graffiti. On their own, they managed to create a cultural institution, which is now monitored by important art publications. Come see a cool DIY project in action, and at the same time buy Voronezh art for your home.
Mood: have a cheat meal
Voronezh does not have a main street with bars, cafes and restaurants, but most of the cool establishments live in the center. If you are in the mood to go all out, then go to Temple. Order a BLT sandwich, maple French toast, chicken curry and a brownie with ice cream in a glass. Bonus: for the start of Beat Weekend, we made several specials with Temple – a hot dog and Mac and cheese.
Just Falafel – An unremarkable eatery with perfect falafel. Palmer – luxurious bagels that are especially pleasant to eat on a large terrace in the summer. “Optimist” – cool selection of wine plus pizza, tartare, salads and meat. Eight is a tried-and-true cocktail bar tucked behind a flower shop. Overlock is a new place that loves disco parties and cocktails (try the taste of Retrosexual).
Wood: admiring sunsets and nature
The North Bridge is perfect for an evening walk over the water. It connects the right and left banks of the Voronezh reservoir. Once upon a time there were trams running along the upper part of the bridge, but now there is a pedestrian zone. From here you have an excellent panorama of the water and the lights of the city at night.
If the mood is “silence and tranquility,” then go to the Agricultural Institute microdistrict. Here, for example, there is a monument to Peter the Great’s baroque – the Voronezh State Agrarian University named after Peter I, and with it – a huge arboretum (a forest within the city!). In the summer everything here blooms and smells wildly, but in the autumn-winter period it is also very beautiful.
Wise: get to the lecture
“Turbo Lecture” is a local analogue of TED Talks for creatives. The guys dream that Voronezh will turn into a new creative center, so they bring directors, art directors, producers, PR people and entrepreneurs of all stripes to the city so that they share their experience with the locals.
For example, the founders of Beat Weekend Alena Bocharova and Kirill Sorokin performed here. When you are in Voronezh, be sure to check out the “Turbo Lectures” social network. You might be able to personally meet the people who make your favorite festivals, magazines and viral ads happen.
Mood: dance at the local Boiler Room
Local Radio is an independent online radio in the spirit of Boiler Room, which broadcasts house, synthwave, ambient, post-punk, avant-rock, jazz, hip-hop and noise. The project brings together artists from all over Russia on one platform: here you can listen to young Voronezh DJs, musicians from Rostov, Lipetsk, St. Petersburg, as well as residents of Powerhouse and Popoff Kitchen.
Like Boiler Room, Local Radio focuses on video: most often they stream from their own studio, but sometimes they host open offline broadcasts in bars. Follow broadcast announcements, watch archived recordings on the YouTube channel and save mixes on soundcloud. The best soundtrack for walking around Voronezh is the audio program “Russian Field of Experiments”.
Mood: walking and looking at street art
At the end of building 49 on Stepan Razin Street, look for the mosaic “Cosberg worked” from the Vimotion studio. This is a poster for the film of the same name, which was included in the national program of the Beat Film Festival 2020. The film is dedicated to Semyon Kosberg and other Voronezh designers who worked on the Vostok-1 rocket engines.
In the Proletary cinema there are two large murals by Jan Posadsky – with Lenin and Soviet workers in 3D glasses. Other spectacular works include “The Battle of Good and Evil” by the KHR Crew group on Kholzunov Street (building 3), mural by the “Kifir” team about local folklore images of ethnic residents on Koltsovskaya Street (building 12), as well as an abstraction by Ilya Blinov on Stepan Razin (house 36).
Wood: go on a tour of the cemeteries
A route for the non-superstitious and everyone who wants to discover the city from an unusual side. Voronezh is the home of the legendary rock band Sektor Gaza. At the Left Bank cemetery, where the leader of the group, Yuri Klinskikh, is buried, there is the “Wall of Khoya”. This is a real rock memorial, covered up and down with graffiti “Khoy is more alive than all the living”, lines from Sektor Gaza songs and declarations of love for the musician.
Thorne is an old European-style cemetery. It is recognized as a historical monument because officers who died in the First World War are buried here. Also in 2020, a city crematorium opened in Voronezh, which Strelka Mag dubbed “the main building of the season.” From the outside it seems that a little more and the white minimalist structure will lift off from the ground.
Beat Weekend coordinator Nikita Pivovarov helped us make this guide. Send him a heart.
