The town is located on the western shore of Lake Baikal, in 127 km away from Irkutsk. The population of the city is 18.9 thousand people. Slyudyanka railway station was opened in 1905, in 1936 it received a status of “town”. Now it is a large railway center of the East Siberian Railway and also a place where a lot of marble is being mined. The name of the city is explained by the fact that in the past people were mining glist in this region (glist in Russian - “slyda”).

There is a famous Mineralogical museum n.a. S. Zhigalov in town. Slyudyanka is a place from where people leave to summit Cherskogo peak (Chamar-Daban ridge, 2090 meters) which is located to the south of Slyudyanka. Circum – Baikal Railway, a famous monument of engineering, starts not far from this town (near Kultuk village).

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