However, Tobolsk’s remote location had other uses for the Russian Tsar.

“Tobolsk was one of the most-popular places to send political dissidents,” says local historian Ekaterina Kulik. “Not only people were exiled, but once a giant bell that was used to incite riots was forced to serve a 300 year term.”

The Russian aristocrats who led a revolt against the tsar in 1825 – known as the Decembrists – were sent there in droves. In Tobolsk they created a replica high-society, displaying the latest French fashions they carried with them into exile from Paris to Siberia.

The town also served up some bitter irony for the Russian Royal Family after the Bolshevik revolution. Nicholas II’s entire family was exiled there, when they spent less than a year in Tobolsk. They would never escape and were mercilessly murdered in the Siberian city of Ekaterinburg.

In Soviet times, with the town’s grand history forgotten, Tobolsk became just another provincial town. Now it hopes to reinvent itself as a winter wonderland and an arts and crafts capital.

Tobolsk’s Kremlin is the only stone Kremlin in Siberia. The reason for this is the fact that the town was once the capital of Siberia – a status that entitled it to the fortress, Lyudmila Kantysheva, a local tour guide, explained.

Tobolsk resident Yulia Udartseva says for her the Tobolsk Kremlin is the most remarkable thing about the town.

One of the key features of Tobolsk is the mix of traditional and urban cultures, says Dean of the Foreign Languages faculty at Tobolsk University, Yulia Vorotnikova.

“The town is divided into two parts – the so-called historical part is lowlands, and usually people of traditional culture, for example Tatars, live there. And still we have highlands – the modern town,” she explains.