 City of Barnaul is an administrative centre of Altai Krai, it is located in 3419 kms to the east from Moscow, in northeast from Priobsky plateau.
Climate is continental. Average temperature of January-17,5 C, July +19,8C.
It was based in 30 year of XVIII century on a place of a village Ust-Barnaulskaya, as settlement Barnaul, because of construction by industrialist A.I.Demidov silver-refining factory.
In the 18th and early 19th centuries 90 per cent of Russian silver - 1000 poods (16.5 tons) annually - was produced in the Altai. The Barnaul silver-smelting works with 13 of its furnaces was considered to be the largest one, the silver production amounted there to 450 poods (7.4 tons) a year. No wonder the small works settlement kept growing and in 1771 it acquired the status of a mining town that was one of the largest in Siberia. The name "mining town" was not haphazard - all the aspects of the town's life were focused on mining production. Russian history records only two mining towns - Ekaterinburg and Barnaul.
Now Barnaul is important industrial centre. There are more than 100 industrial enterprises in the city with 120 thousand people employed there. They produce diesels, metal-cutting lathes, forge presses, steam boilers, tyres, synthetic fibres, technical carbon, boring machines, cotton cloth, furniture, footwear, faceted diamonds.
Barnaul is easily accessible. It is linked by air, railways, cars and river boats with other parts of Russia and local places.
The city has five theatres, a Philharmonic Society, three museums, twelve Palaces and Houses of Culture, ten musical and art schools, thirty the municipal libraries with a total of 1200000 books. There is a Palace of Sports, Sport Complex "Ob", stadiums, sportshalls, swimming pools and a hippodrome at the disposal of our sportsmen.
Six Higher Educational Establishments of Barnaul encompass twenty two thousand full time students majoring in fifty specialities.
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