An extract from Saltykov-Shchedrin's letter to his friend Vladimir Bezobrazov:

"Ever since I arrived here, I have been swamped with work which can only be described as excruciating, and not only can I engage in nothing [else] but I am unable to even enjoy reading a book. Put shortly, I am furious with myself, if not sorry, for accepting my appointment to Ryazan. Such profusion of lawlessness and absurdity is unlikely to be found, and the trickery of Vyatka is no more than an example of pure good nature [when compared] to the trickery typical for Ryazan. <…> I do not know and cannot predict the end of my tortures. I am only sure that I am unlikely to endure this for long." (29 June 1858)

Ryazan played an important role in Saltykov-Shchedrin's works. During his first arrival in Ryazan, the writer completed his previous works, which later were included into the Innocent Stories and Satires in Prose cycles: The Happy Living, Our Friendly Pastime, Gegemoniyev, Zubatov, Madam Padeykova, Agreement (Meeting), The Gnashing of Teeth. Saltykov-Shchedrin's writing was not limited to fiction: around the same time he creates And The Gnashing of Teeth, an article that remained unpublished until 1915. A lot of what was written in Ryazan becomes part of Grassroots Journalism, a story that was written in late 1860 in Tver and contained the first reference to the city of Glupov, a generalised image of a Russian city (according to some opinions, true in any era and under any government).

With his stinging satire, Saltykov-Shchedrin became a real terror for provincial officials. His two years in office produced a heavy file with complaints about his practices. Living in a spirit of total lawlessness, Ryazan's officials and landlords came to hate Saltykov-Shchedrin and caused him to resign and leave the city in 1860.

Ryazan's main association with Saltykov-Shchedrin today is the turquoise-coloured classicist building in Lenin Street. Built in 1804, the house is an example of the pre-war (or pre-fire, as the Muscovites would say) Classicism. In the early 19th century, the house was owned by the Governorate's Attorney N.L. Drukort, before being converted into a revenue house by the middle of the century. It is here that Saltykov-Shchedrin resided in 1858 and 1860. However, as he did not own the building, it would not be true to describe it as "Saltykov-Shchedrin's house".

From Ivan Pavlov's memories:

"I have been told that I was born in the house of my maternal grandfather. But strangely enough, it feels as if I remember my first visit to the house where I later spent my childhood up until adolescence. But I made that visit when in the hands of my nurse, meaning I was about twelve months old. I may be wrong in my estimation of my age at the time. My father, who had previously resided with his father-in-law, bought an old house that was renovated before we moved in. The floor in the house was repaired as well. Probably out of precaution, me and my elder brother were held by our nurse. I remember very vividly being in her hands, as well as the floor being repaired. The fact that I remember myself back to a very early stage in my life was also proven by another incident. When one of my maternal uncles died and was being carried to the cemetery I was taken out to say goodbye, and that memory also remains very vivid."

Ivan Pavlov visited the house of his childhood last time in August 1935, at the age of 86. He passed away six months later, and as early as a decade afterwards, in 1946, the house was turned into a museum. The interior of a 19th century home is still preserved here. The two houses with a wooden gate, fence, front yard, and an apple garden are truly part of the Ryazan of the mid-19th century.

Tsiolkovsky left some notable memories about the childhood years he spent in Ryazan:

"In my dreams, I imagined jumping high and climbing up poles and ropes like a cat. I also dreamt about having no gravity. I liked climbing walls, roofs, and trees. I would jump off a fence to fly. I liked running around and playing with the ball and games like lapta, gorodki, blind man's buff, and other. I used to fly a kite and also raised a small box with a cockroach to its height using the thread. During rains and in autumn, there was a huge puddle in our yard. Both water and ice caused me to go into a dreamy state of mind. I tried sailing a water trough and making ice skates out of wire. As for the latter, I succeeded, but then I fell on ice so badly that I saw stars. Finally I was given a pair of real skates, though broken. They were repaired, and I mastered skating in one day. I even used them to go to a pharmacy the very same day I put them on."

After four years at school in Vyatka, three years of self-learning, and two years of home schooling in Vyatka, the 20-year-old Tsiolkovsky returned to Ryazan. The family had to move out of Vyatka as a result of the ill health of Konstantin's father, who struggled to accept the death of his wife and some of their children. Tsiolkovsky's family settled in a one-storey wooden house in Sadovaya Street.

Tsiolkovsky wrote about the second time he lived in the city: "I visited the places where I used to live in Ryazan. Everything seemed very little and dirty, and everyone I knew looked short and grown really old. Gardens, yards and houses lost their appeal, which is the usual disappointment one feels when visiting the once well-known places."

"Every day I would go on walks quite far away from home and dreamt about my works and an airship. I had been warned that there were a lot of wolves around, with wolf tracks and even feathers left from the chickens they had attacked. But somehow I did not think it was dangerous and went on with my walks."

Some time after moving back to Ryazan, Tsiolkovsky had a row with his father, as a result moving out to rent a room in the house of a Palkin, a civil servant. Since no one knew Tsiolkovsky in Ryazan, there was no demand for the private lessons he was offering.

Famous horticulturist Ivan V. Michurin was born in his father's estate of Vershina (near the village of Yumashevka, Pronsky District of the Ryazan Governorate). At the age of 17, Michurin graduated from a local school in Pronsk in 1872 and was preparing for admission to the St Petersburg college when his father suddenly fell ill. Rumour had it that he suffered from a mental illness and was institutionalised in Ryazan. Michurin's family went into debts and had to sell the family estate. Since then, Michurin lived in Ryazan, and his uncle helped him enrol in a local school of the Ryazan Governorate.

Michurin barely stayed there for six months before being expelled in 1872 in quite a preposterous story.

In his biography I.V. Michurin: The Great Remaker of Nature, A.N. Bakharev wrote,

"In an exceptionally cold weather in winter, student Michurin failed to take his hat off when saying hello to the school principal Mr Oransky, who found that unacceptable." That episode ended Michurin's short stay in Ryazan. After his expulsion from school, he moved to the town of Kozlov (currently Michurinsk), where he worked as a railway clerk for many years.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, a former political prisoner, arrived in Ryazan in 1957 to move in with his ex-wife Natalia Reshetovskaya. For eight years, from 1957 to 1965, they lived at apartment 3, 12, 1st Kasimovsky Side Street. Today, this address is 17 Uritsky Street. For Solzhenitsyn, a 9 sq m room in a wooden barrack felt like the best place he had ever lived in.

Natalia Reshetovskaya's notes about their room in Ryazan:

"Our room had two desks facing each other: one of my husband, big and simple, with a multitude of drawers in it; and mine, old, small, resting on fine carved legs. Walls were hidden behind bookshelves. A small round table, also old, stood near the bed. We used it for the books that we read before falling asleep."

The photo above shows Ryazan school No. 2, which Solzhenitsyn was appointed to in July 1957 as a teacher of physics and astronomy.

His former student N. Torpova (Sazonova) reminisced about her school days in 1989:

"<...> After the new teacher arrived, I began to like physics. All the students did. Mr Solzhenitsyn's teaching system was close to what universities had, with extensive oral examinations, tests, and exciting laboratory experiments. I think he could be just as good at teaching literature. His approach was what made his stood out. For an astronomy lesson, Mr Solzhenitsyn could bring a book of classic prose, find a piece of text with a description of stars, and comment on them as a professional astronomer. It turned out that even classic authors who liked looking at stars were not always right in their observations. Stories about the secrets of stars, which Mr Solzhenitsyn sometimes told us when going out to the local Kremlin, were so poetic and his gift of storytelling so obvious that the students were tempted to ask him about something more than simply the sky above. But there was always something mysterious about Mr Solzhenitsyn, and children never ventured."

O.B. Suslovich, one of the teachers at school No. 2:

"Mr Solzhenitsyn's lessons were always absorbing and full of emotions. Children would listen to him with great attention. I was often a witness to his extraordinary lessons."

The college became a prototype for the one described by Solzhenitsyn in For the Good of the Cause. The novella describes students of an electronics college spending their summer helping to build new college premises – only to learn that on completion the Soviet authorities order from Moscow that the building should be handed over to a new research institute.

In 2003, a small literature museum opened at the college to commemorate Solzhenitsyn's works.

The years spent in Ryazan marked a very prolific period in Solzhenitsyn's life: One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, An Incident at Krechetovka Station, The First Circle, Cancer Ward, The Red Wheel, Matryona's Home, For the Good of the Cause, The Gulag Archipelago, and Miniatures were all written in Ryazan.

In his memoir The Oak and the Calf, Solzhenitsyn wrote: "The November holidays were over, the trains got less crammed with people, and I decided to go to Moscow. Little did I know that it would be forever, that I was not to live in Ryazan again, a city which was from that moment on closed to me."

An influential Neoclassical architect of Moscow, Matvey Kazakov was credited with creating some of Ryazan's famous houses of the late 18th century: assembly of nobility, Ryumin's house, Malshin Almshouse, and governorate school No. 1. Until recently this had been open to queston until researchers found information in the archives that almost all of those buildings were designed by Nikifor P. Milyunov, Ryazan Governorate's architect. Still, Kazakov has some quite direct ties to Ryazan.

In 1812, during the Patriotic War, Kazakov's family took him to Ryazan, away from the warfare. The architect was 74 at the time and had developed health problems. This is when the news about the fire of Moscow came. The city, which had taken so much of Kazakov's effort and heart to build and decorate, burnt down. The famous architect failed to get over the tragic news and passed away on 7 November 1812.