Velikie Luki city (Pskov region, Russia) (original) (raw)

This page is part of © FOTW Flags Of The World website

g. Velikie Luki

г. Великие Луки

image by Mikhail Revnivtsev, 03 May 2005

About the flag

On this Russian website is flag of municipality of Velikie Luki, a city in Region of Pskov (Russian Federation). It has been adopted on April, 29, 2005 at session of a municipal duma of the city of Velikie Luki.

This flag is based on historical coat of arms of this city, created in 1724 by first Russian heraldist comte Francisco de Santi from Piemonte. It is wrong, so-called “speaking arms”. The name of city Velikie Luki occurs from three big bends of the river Lovat’.These bends in Russian refer to “luka” (plural — luki), i.e. Velikie Luki = Great Bends.

In Russian plural from word "luk" (="bow") has the form "luki" (="bows") and plural from word "luka" (="bend") has the form "luki" (="bends"). Italian (Piemotiane) comte Francisco de Santi did not know these subtleties of Russian language and consequently instead of three bends of the river Lovat’ has wrong represented in the coat arms of Velikie Luki as three bows.

Mikhail Revnivtsev, 03 May 2005

Possible former flag

Flag reported by Pascal Gross on 22 Aug 2005 at http://adm.velikieluki.ru/symbol/detail.php?art_id=12. However that page now reports the flag above with 3 bows. I suspect that the flag with the ship was the one in use before April 2005
Andrew Weeks, 17 Aug 2011

Anything below this line was not added by the editor of this page.