The view of the Provlilonal itorehou§ei in the Volga Emb. and Znameniky Lane from the raft bridge from over the Volga

Photo by M. P. Nastyukov. Tver, 1867. From the scries "The Views of sites along the Volga from Tver to Kazan". The Collection of TSUM.

The Public garden situated in the right half of the photo was a boundary over which a kingdom of architecture began, as a rule completely deprived of "green cover" in the second half of XIX. The town-builders had used trees and shrubs with proved reason till the late XTX century. Apparently the desire to avoid the originally understanding «red-tape» had led to a large-scale planting of trees in the streets. Attempts were made to give that planting a systematic character before the Revolution but Soviet time with its total love to urban green deprived us of full-blooded apprehension of historic-architectural heritage.
The prevailed in the photo overall building of the embankment was brightened up with a number of churches. Due to the photographer's luck the temples situated in the central part of Tver received a single rhythm. The direction found made the distance between the churches almost equall. It varied the landscape and brought the order to the architecture. Now this silhouette is poor for only one of the pictured in the photo temples still exists. It is the Church of Ascension (the corner of Sovietskaya St. and Tverskoy Prospect). In the place of the Church of the Sign (Znamenskaya) - its on the right - the Library after M. Gorky stands, instead of the Church of St. Ilya - a dwelling house, hotel «Seliger» is instead of the Church of the Miraculous Icon of the Virgin of Vladimir. The loss of the temples was partly compensated visually by buildings of «Zvezda» (the Star) cinema and a hostel of Anti-Aircraft Defence Academy (Stepana Razina Embankment, 2). The latter was erected in 1930s in the place of Provisions shop, which was considerable in length and had been built in 1760s. It is pictured in the centre of the photo before the five-cupolas Church of St. Ilya.
The photographer took a part of the embankment in the Zavolzhye, so we have an opportunity to see in the left half of the photo in the foreground the arcade with a tavern and a drinking shop which were made in the beginning of the XIX century under the project of K. I. Rossi. Evidently by the end of the XIX century the tavern and the drinking shop had became a part of a store house.