Editing Irkutsk (section)

===Urban layout===
[[File:Cerkiew Kazańska w Irkucku 04.JPG|left|thumb|220px|Cathedral of the Theotokos of Kazan]]
The center of the historical part of the city is Kirov Square. In that place on July 6, 1661, Yakov Pokhabov laid a prison for collecting [[Yasak]], a tax collected from the local population with fur.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://pribaikal.ru/events-culture0/article/10916.html |title=О ПРЕДЫСТОРИИ ИРКУТСКОГО ОСТОРГА |publisher=// pribaikal.ru |access-date=November 6, 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131110104347/http://pribaikal.ru/events-culture0/article/10916.html |url-status=live |archive-date=November 10, 2013 }}</ref> The architectural appearance of present-day Irkutsk has been born since the days of the wooden prison. The historic center of the city is now in its place. By the beginning of the 18th century, it had turned into a wooden fortress, which protected the inhabitants from the raids of nomads. A major fire of 1716 almost completely destroyed the fortifications, but in just a year new ones were built, already made of stone. 

Of the buildings on the territory of the Irkutsk Kremlin of that time, the Savior Church has survived, the stone building of which was laid in 1706 in the north-western corner of the fort. Along with the Epiphany Cathedral, erected behind the eastern wall of the fortress and also preserved to this day, this is one of the oldest stone buildings in Siberia. The protective palisade and the moat, which once defended the Irkutsk fortress from the south, from the Angara bank to the Ushakovka River, existed until the middle of the 18th century. 

In early Irkutsk there were no streets at all, the buildings approached the driveways with random turns and only with subsequent alterations were turned around with front facades. The first settlers did not orient their houses in relation to neighboring buildings either. When building a new house, the owners usually adhered only to the orientation of the windows to the south side. This is how the layout of the oldest part of the city took shape — from Angara to modern Karl Marx Street: the main directions of the streets repeat the outlines of the coastline, which, in turn, are crossed by transverse passages connecting the outskirts of the city with the center and overlooking the Angara bank. 

The curvature of the central streets and the disparity of the quarters formed by them, shows the spontaneous process of their formation. This is especially noticeable in the example of Basninskaya Street (now Sverdlova Street), which they tried to straighten with each new attempt to streamline the development. And it simply repeated the outlines of the log that once was here, formed, possibly, by the old lady of the Gryaznushka river, which connected Ushakovka and Angara.<ref>[Дамешек Л. М. и др. Иркутск в панораме веков: очерки истории города / Под ред. Л. М. Дамешек. — И.: Восточно-Сибирская издательская компания, 2002]</ref><ref name="irkipedia.ru"/>

In 1726, defensive fortifications (palisade) were built in Irkutsk, behind which the barracks of the local garrison were taken out. The construction of the palisade changed the process of the spontaneous evolution of buildings and influenced the formation of the city's layout in the most significant way. After the fortification was dismantled in 1790,<ref>Дамешек Л. М. и др. Иркутск в панораме веков: очерки истории города / Под ред. Л. М. Дамешек. — И.: Восточно-Сибирская издательская компания, 2002.</ref> a complete mismatch of street directions in the old and new parts of the city was revealed.

The state of development of the "pre-palisade" period is reflected in the first of the known plans of Irkutsk in 1729. Its main advantage is the fixation of the city's borders, which ran along the line of the modern Karl Marx Street. Between 1729 and 1768 in the space between Angara and Ushakovka, the first "zapalisadny" row of blocks is formed. A spontaneous settlement appears near the soldiers' barracks, first along the roads that approached the Mill and Overseas gates, and then between them. The development proceeded unevenly, the closest to the current state at that time were the fragments of buildings located in the area of Zamorskaya (Lenin st.) And Institutskaya (Oktyabrskaya Revolyutsii st.) Streets. Now it is, roughly, quarters No. 90, 91, 92.{{Citation needed|date=January 2024}}

The last third of the 18th century was significant both for the history of the city as a whole and for the formation of its buildings. With the formation of the Irkutsk province in 1764, Irkutsk became the center of the largest region in Russia—Eastern Siberia, which included Transbaikalia, Yakutia, the entire northeast to the Pacific Ocean. Irkutsk needed to expand, and by that time there were no enemies ready to lay claim to the city. The palisade was dismantled, and in its place appeared Bolshaya Preshpektnaya Street, now Karla Marxa Street, the only straight street in modern Irkutsk. The devastating fire of 1879 made its own adjustments to the construction laws as it was from here that the border began, beyond which it was forbidden to build from wood. This has divided the old Irkutsk into two parts: closer to the Angara river, mainly stone buildings remained, and on the other side, where there were once outskirts, the wooden Irkutsk grew.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.culture.ru/institutes/5658/istoricheskii-centr-irkutska |title=Исторический центр Иркутска. Подробная информация: расписание, фото, адрес и т. д. на официальном сайте Культура.РФ |access-date=December 1, 2020 |archive-date=October 19, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201019191107/https://www.culture.ru/institutes/5658/istoricheskii-centr-irkutska |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |url=https://tochka-na-karte.ru/Attractions/344-Istoricheskij-tsentr-Irkutska.html |title=ИСТОРИЧЕСКИЙ ЦЕНТР ИРКУТСКА |access-date=December 1, 2020 |archive-date=March 5, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210305195455/https://tochka-na-karte.ru/Attractions/344-Istoricheskij-tsentr-Irkutska.html |url-status=live }}</ref>