Kungur on the Siberian Route

Kungur was widely known to be a flourishing business and industrial centre as it was located on a very strategically important road, called the Great Siberian Route. At about 9,000 kilometres in length, it was considered to be the longest land route in the world. For over 200 years, thousands of coaches and merchants’ caravans traversed the route annually, not to mention the hundreds of thousands of carts, taking them from Moscow to Siberia and beyond, to Kyakhta near the Russian-Mongolian border. Europe exported textiles and wine whilst Asia exported tea, silk and spices. Legends abounded about the prosperity of the Ural lands, with people speaking of the region “raining and snowing squirrels, martens, and sables, and they spread out in the forests in great numbers”. As early as the 11th century the Urals were explored to find some possible routes. As a result, all Siberian roads ran through the lands surrounding Perm. In the 17th century the merchants and their caravans began to make their way from the centre of Russia to Siberia via Kungur. Not surprisingly, trade was highly developed there.