The story
Tomsk Ax Day in Tomsk/Zorkaltsevo
Den Topora, or Ax Day, is an annual wood-sculpture and folk-craft festival held in the village of Zorkaltsevo just outside Tomsk. Carvers work with axes and chainsaws to create large wooden sculptures on site, alongside a broader market of traditional Siberian crafts.
Wood has shaped Siberian building culture for centuries, from the log farmhouses that still stand across the Tomsk region to the elaborately carved window frames, known locally as nalichniki, that decorate historic wooden houses in Tomsk itself, one of Russia's best-preserved cities for wooden architecture.