Sovetskaya Square

Initially, the square was named Ilyinskaya in honor of the temple of Elijah the Prophet, around which it is located. After the Communists came to power, the executive committee of the Council of Workers' and Peasants' Deputies was placed on the square in the building of the former offices, and it received its current name – Sovetskaya.

The main decoration of the square is the Church of Elijah the Prophet, which is considered an outstanding creation of representatives of the Yaroslavl school of architecture and painting of the XVII century. Numerous frescoes of the temple based on biblical and evangelical subjects were executed by famous Kostroma artists Guriy Nikitin and Sila Savin.

At the end of the XVIII century, Yaroslavl received a plan for regular development, the center of which was then Ilyinskaya Square. Government buildings are being built here: two three-storey buildings of Public places, in the northern building of which the regional Duma is now located, and the palace of the Yaroslavl governor, which under Paul I, as a result of the abolition of the institute of viceroyalty, was simply dismantled into bricks.

For some time, the police department and the Mytninsky market were located on the site of the former palace. In the 70s of the twentieth century, the regional committee of the CPSU decided to build a new building here for the needs of the committee. At first, the authorities were even going to recreate the former appearance of the palace. However, this idea was abandoned, and in 1981 a trapezoidal building in the style of Soviet constructivism appeared on the square. Currently, the administration of the Yaroslavl Region is located here.

A small red brick chapel in pseudo-Russian style, located opposite the regional committee building, has a rather impressive name for its size: the chapel of Alexander Nevsky, Mary Magdalene, Nicholas the Wonderworker, Great Martyr George, Michael the Archangel, St. Xenia of St. Petersburg and Princess Olga. The townspeople simply call her Alexander Nevsky. It was built in memory of the rescue of the imperial family during the disaster on the railway at Borki station.

The streets and alleys of Yaroslavl radiate from Sovetskaya Square: Strelka lies to the southeast, Bogoyavlenskaya Square with the Spaso-Preobrazhensky Monastery lies to the southwest, Red Square to the north, and Volzhskaya Embankment to the east.