Grozny
— — a city rebuilt from the foundation up.
Not only on a wall.
“The capital of Chechnya, set on the Sunzha River where the steppe meets the first ridges of the Greater Caucasus. The city was levelled almost completely in the wars of the 1990s and early 2000s and rebuilt across the next decade. The Akhmad Kadyrov Mosque at the centre, the cluster of Grozny City towers behind it, the long Putin Avenue and the new Flower Park hold the rebuilt skyline together. South of the city the mountains rise quickly, holding the old tower villages of Itum-Kale and Sharoy in their valleys. From the studio. from the studio
Grozny, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Grozny sits on the Sunzha River in the North Caucasus, at an elevation of about 126 metres where the southern Russian steppe meets the foothills of the Greater Caucasus range. It is the capital of the Chechen Republic and held roughly 330,000 residents at the 2021 census, up from under 200,000 at the close of the second war in 2003. The city lies about 1,800 kilometres south of Moscow and 130 kilometres east of Vladikavkaz; the nearest international gateway is Grozny Airport, which reopened to scheduled service in 2007.
The skyline of present-day Grozny is almost entirely post-2005 construction. The Akhmad Kadyrov Mosque, opened in 2008 and modelled on Istanbul's Blue Mosque, holds 10,000 worshippers under a 32-metre central dome flanked by four 62-metre minarets. The Grozny City complex immediately behind it includes seven towers, the tallest reaching 145 metres, finished in 2010. The Akhmat Tower, planned at over 400 metres on the Sunzha riverfront, has been under intermittent construction since 2017. Almost no pre-war fabric remains in the central districts.
Most visits work the central axis: the Kadyrov Mosque, the Grozny City towers, the National Museum of the Chechen Republic and the Flower Park along the Sunzha. The mosque is open to non-Muslim visitors outside prayer times with covered dress. South of the city, two-hour drives reach the medieval tower villages of Itum-Kale and the Argun Gorge, and the Veduchi ski resort opened in 2018 at about 1,500 metres elevation. Spring and early autumn are the steadiest months; summer in the city runs above 30 °C.