Anton Chekhov was born in Taganrog, a large industrial city in Rostov region. It was founded by Emperor Peter I in 1698 as a naval base by the Azov sea, and by mid-XIX century it became a large sea port through which commodities from southern countries were imported to Russia.
The first two pictures at the top show an overall view of the city and a sea wharf. By the way, Taganrog wharf is the first one in the world built in the open sea instead of a land-locked harbour.
It was in Taganrog where the life of Chekhov’s family began, founded by Yegor Chekhov. The next picture shows the senior generation of the Chekhov family: sitting – Yefrosinya Yemelyanovna (Chekhov’s grandmother), Yegor Mikhailovich, (grandfather), Lyudmila Pavlovna (the wife of his uncle Mitrofan). Standing: Yevgueniya Yakovlevna (mother), Pavel Yegorovich (father), Mitrofan Yegorovich (uncle). Below are the pictures of the writer’s mother and father. Chekhov wrote: “My father and mother are the only people in the entire world for whom I will never spare anything. If I attain greater heights, it will be their doing…”
The Chekhovs had six children – five sons and a daughter. Anton was the third child in the family. The picture in the frame is a unique photo of the Chekhov family dated 1874-1875. It is the earliest surviving image of the writer.
“As a child, I was given a religious upbringing and education”, — Chekhov wrote. There were many churches in Taganrog. 

At the age of seven the parents sent Anton to a preparatory class of a Greek parish school in the name of Constantine and Elena (the last picture on the display board) where he studied for a year. In 1867–1875, Chekhov, together with his brothers Alexander and Mikhail sang in a church choir organized by their father. They sang in St. Metrophanes church, where Mitrofan, their father’s brother, was a church warden, and in Alexander-Nevsky Jerusalem Greek monastery (the bottom row on the display panel). The picture in one but last row shows the archpriest and spiritual writer VasIly Bandakov whose sermons Chekhov heard his as a child, and later he wrote in Bandakov’s obituary: ‘He died at the age of 83, and left a memory behind of a kind, loving and unmercenary person’.