Rybinsk (Ры´бинск), with population exceding 250,000, is the second largest city of the Yaroslavl Oblast, Russia. It lies at the confluence of the Volga and Sheksna rivers. Geographical coordinates: 58°3′ 38°50′ E.
In the 17th century, when the Sloboda was capitalizing on the trade of the Muscovy Company with Western Europe, it was rich enough to build several stone churches, of which only one survives to the present. More old architecture may be found in the neighbourhood, including the very last of Muscovite three-tented churches (in the Alexandrov Hermitage) and the Ushakov family shrine (on the Epiphany Island).
In the 18th century, the sloboda continued to thrive on the Volga trade. Catherine II granted Rybnaya Sloboda municipal rights and renamed it into the town of Rybinsk. It was a place where the cargo was reloaded from large Volga vessels to smaller boats capable of navigating in the shallow Mariinsk Canal system, which connects the Russian hinterland with the Baltic Sea. With the population of 7,000, the town of Rybinsk daily accomodated up to 170,000 sailors and up to 2,000 river vessels. Consequently, the local river port became known as the "capital of barge-haulers".
The town's most conspicuous landmark, the Neoclassical Saviour-Transfuguration Cathedral, was constructed on the Volga riverside from 1838 until 1851. It was built to a design that the President of the Imperial Academy of Arts, Avraam Melnikov, had prepared for Saint Isaac's Cathedral in St Petersburg. After Melnikov lost the contest for the best project of St Isaac's Cathedral to Auguste de Montferrand, he sold his grandiose design to the municipal authorities of Rybinsk. [image]
As a trade capital of the Upper Volga, Rybinsk formerly attracted scores of foreigners, who built a Lutheran church and an imposing Roman Catholic cathedral, said to be the tallest on the Volga. There is also the Nobel Family Museum, documenting the operations of that illustrious Swedish family in Imperial Russia. Early film moguls Nicholas Schenck and Joseph Schenck were born in the town, and there is a grand 18th-century mansion of the Mikhalkov family, whose living members include Sergey Mikhalkov, Nikita Mikhalkov, and Andron Konchalovsky.
The most important industries of modern Rybinsk are aircraft engine manufacturing and a hydroelectric power station. As the experts warn, the giant Rybinsk dam, which holds the Rybinsk Reservoir (formerly touted as the largest man-made body of water on Earth) places the town in the imminent danger of the dam breaking and the reservoir flooding the city.