Edge of Europe and Asia — Perm Ballet, Kama River, and the world's oldest geological period
Perm sits on the Kama River at the foot of the Ural Mountains — geographically the last major European city before Asia begins. It's a city with an unusual cultural density for the Urals: the Perm Opera and Ballet Theatre is one of Russia's finest, the Perm-36 gulag museum is the most complete surviving Soviet labour camp in the world, and the city gave its name to the Permian geological period (252–299 million years ago) because the rocks of the Ural foothills were first systematically studied here by Scottish geologist Roderick Murchison in 1841. The Kama is one of Russia's great rivers — w…
Perm was established in 1723 by Peter the Great's industrialisation programme — copper smelters built to exploit Ural ore deposits. It served as a major industrial and administrative centre throughout the Imperial period, and in the Gulag era became the administrative hub for a vast network of labour camps across the Perm Krai and Komi regions. Perm-36, 100km northeast of the city, held political prisoners through 1987 and is now a memorial and museum. The city hosted a remarkable cultural experiment from 2008–2013 when regional governor Oleg Chirkunov and art director Marat Gelman turned Per…