Metravel city quest
City Gomel: free walking route “Quest: Sovetskaya Street” along the sights. 6 points. Approximately 1 h. Quests and legends - straight from your smartphone.
If Gomel has a page where its business history is written down, it is Sovetskaya Street. Before the revolution it was called Rumyantsevskaya, after the counts who owned the city, and it was the main trading artery. People did not pray or govern here: they earned money here.
At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries Gomel grew fast — the railway came through, and wagon trains of timber, grain and furs rolled in. Merchants (mostly from the city's large Jewish community, which made up more than half of the population) bought up plots on the main street and put up rental buildings: pharmacies, offices and notaries downstairs, rented apartments and courses above. Each such building is an investment, an advertisement and the ambition of a single family all at once. From the facades you can literally read who had money here and what taste they had.
The war tore whole paragraphs out of this chronicle — the city's finest hotel, dozens of shops, the synagogues. But a lot survived, and today we will walk along the street and “read” what is left: a bank on the corner, a merchant's rental building with brick carving, a surviving fragment of a legendary hotel.
What to do: 1) Read the story and the task at each stop. 2) Find the building on the map and walk up to it. 3) Raise your eyes to the facade and answer the question.
The route is on foot, along Sovetskaya from south to north — from Lenin Square into the depths of the old business center. Let's go!
The route points in order — what these places are and why they are interesting. Tasks and answers stay inside the quest.
We begin at the very start of the street — where Rumyantsevskaya set out from the central square. This building, No.
Turn off Sovetskaya at the corner with Kommunarov Street (formerly Myasnitskaya). Before the war, Gomel's greatest showpiece stood here — the “Savoy” hotel.
Go back to Sovetskaya and walk up the odd-numbered side. The most imposing building of business Gomel is the former Russo-Asiatic Bank, built in 1910–1912 on the corner of Rumyantsevskaya and Baron Nolken Street.
Cross to the even-numbered side — before you is one of the most elegant rental buildings on the street. It was built in 1894 by the merchant Leiba Mayants, and it is a classic example of how money was made on the main street.
Right after the Mayants building stretches a row of its neighbors — rental buildings No. 10 and No.
The final stop is a small detour from Sovetskaya onto Pushkin Street, to an elegant mansion with columns. This is the “Hunting Lodge” — the most mysteriously named house of old Gomel.
Opening hours: Tue–Sun 10:00–19:00 (ticket office until 18:30), closed Monday
This route is part of Metravel city quests. Below are the other quests in this city and cities with quests nearby.