Things to do in Volga Region
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Stalin’s Bunker
Stalin’s Bunker, built nine storeys below the Academy of Culture and Art, never actually served its intended purpose, as Stalin decided to stay in Moscow to direct events. Unfortunately, the administration is pretty Stalinist to individual tourists – it is almost impossible to get in during the summer period when all excursion slots are booked by cruise companies. In winter, you need to call in advance to arrange a visit.
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Kipyatok
This funky restaurant recreates the golden age of the Russian culinary arts – the early 20th century – when chefs put innovation ahead of ethnic tradition. Inventive dishes such as chicken fillet stuffed with pumpkin and pickles, or pork with cedar nuts and lemon skins are complemented by home-made kvas and mors.
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Samara Art Museum
The Samara Art Museum exhibits mainly Russian art, including works by artists who came to the region to paint. Look for Boyarishina, given by Surikov to a local doctor who treated him when he fell ill. The museum also holds an impressive collection of early Malevich.
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Lutheran Church
Reminiscent of a medieval German basilica, the Lutheran Church was built by a growing German population, who settled here from the 1760s under Catherine the Great’s agricultural development program. This church often hosts concerts on Sunday afternoons.
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Pokrovsky Cathedral
The Pokrovsky Cathedral, built in 1860, was once resplendent in gold, marble and artistry. Apparently these riches proved their value during the 1920s famine, when they were sold to Finland for 32 wagons of bread for Samara residents to eat.
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Ploshchad Slavy
Ploshchad Slavy is a memorial to Samara's role in WWII. The shiny 53m-high statue of a worker holding a pair of wings symbolises the city's aviation-related contributions: local factories produced the IL-2, known as the 'flying tank', during WWII.
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Catholic Church
After the suppression of Polish uprisings in the Russian empire in 1830, a small group of Polish exiles settled in Samara. In 1902 this community built the Gothic Catholic Church.
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Zhiguli Brewery
Head to the eastern side of the Zhiguli Brewery, built by Austrian aristocrat Alfred von Wakano in 1881, and fill your bottle with fresh local beer .
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Alabin Museum
The massive Alabin Museum has exhibits on regional palaeontology and archaeology, including dinosaur fossils found in the Zhiguli Hills.
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Iversky Women’s Monastery
The Iversky Women’s Monastery, founded in 1850, was home to 360 nuns, mostly daughters of local merchants.
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Ulyanov Family House-Museum
The Ulyanov family house-museum is where Vladimir Ilych and his family lived for three years from 1890 to 1893.
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U Palycha
This Samara institution is highly recommended for the Russian cuisine. There’s live Russian folk music every night.
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St George Cathedral
On the east side of the square, the St George Cathedral honours the heroes of the Great Patriotic War.
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Museum of Volga People’s Architecture & Culture
The open-air Museum of Volga People’s Architecture & Culture has a pleasant woodland setting and a collection of traditional wooden buildings from Russian and Mordva (a Finno-Ugric people) villages. Young history enthusiasts stage colourful celebrations of five main village holidays a year. That involves a lot of singing and dancing, as well as teaching Russian visitors their forgotten rituals originating from Slavic paganism. Dates vary, so check with the staff if this might happen during your stay. The museum is located in the remote Shchelokovsky Khutor park, which is the final stop of bus 28 (every hour), which passes ul Belinskogo in the centre.
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Syuyumbike Tower
Nearby, the slightly leaning 59m-high Syuyumbike Tower is named after a long-suffering princess who was married to three successive khans. Ivan the Terrible launched his siege of Kazan as a result of Syuyumbike's refusal to marry him - according to legend. To save her city, the princess agreed to marry the tsar, but only if he could build a tower higher than any other mosque in Kazan in a week.
Unfortunately for Syuyumbike, the tower was completed, driving her to jump to her death from its upper terrace shortly thereafter. Today, the tower competes with a rival landmark inside the kremlin.
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Sakharov Museum
A reminder of more repressive times, the Sakharov Museum is located in the flat where the dissident scientist spent six years in exile. The Nobel laureate was held incommunicado until 1986, when a KGB officer came to install a telephone. When it rang, it was Mikhail Gorbachev at the other end, informing Sakharov of his release. The phone is a highlight of the exhibition. To get there take marshrutka 4 or 104 from pl Minina i Pozharskogo.
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Gorod Gorky
Irony outweighs nostalgia in this retro-Soviet place hidden in a courtyard off the main drag – look for the Музей СССР sign. Walk through a waxwork Leonid Brezhnev’s office into the dining room, littered with Soviet memorabilia and Beatles photos. The food is surprisingly good, and you can compare how much it costs today with how little it cost in 1974.
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Velimir Khlebnikov Museum
The Velimir Khlebnikov Museum is dedicated to a futurist poet who – together with Mayakovsky and the gang – issued a manifesto urging fellow writers ‘to throw Pushkin out of the steamship of modernity’ and tell Dostoyevsky the news. The museum is located in a flat where his biologist father moved when he founded what is now the Astrakhan Biosphere Reserve.
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Lenin State University
At the foot of Kremlyovskaya ul, you can't miss the overbearing classical façade of the main building of Lenin State University, where Vlad Ilych himself was a student. Across the street, the statue of a young Lenin looks like he's on his way to class. However, the plaques don't tell us that he was actually expelled from the university for revolutionary activity and questionable connections.
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Goncharov Museum
The Goncharov Museumis in the two-storey house where the writer Ivan Goncharov grew up. His most famous work is Oblomov; less well known is his travelogue Frigate Pallada describing Goncharov’s journey on a sailing ship from St Petersburg to Japan around Cape Horn with the first Russian diplomatic mission to the country, which was just beginning to open.
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Museum of Ulyanovsk Architecture
The Museum of Ulyanovsk Architecture contains a full-size model of a Simbirsk wooden fortress watchtower and an exhibition about architects responsible for the town’s best buildings, both at ul Tolstogo 43. The premises at ul Tolstogo 24a contain a moving exhibition dedicated to the city’s architectural heritage that was destroyed by the Communists.
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Bachelor’s Shelter
What a relief to escape the train station’s dingy neighbourhood by sneaking into this rabbit’s hole, which opens into a spotlessly white oasis of style with surrealist glass painting and coat-hangers shaped like wild garlic flowers. International food, including the inevitable sushi, is on the menu, and they’ve got the best latte this side of the Volga.
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Historical Cultural Centre
The gigantic concrete Historical Cultural Centre has, on the 1st floor, an interesting and politically neutral exhibition on Lenin’s and Kerensky’s boyhoods and a large exhibition on the history of Russian communism till perestroika, which is shy about Stalin’s repressions and completely avoids any controversy regarding Lenin.
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Nikolsky Gate
Buildings inside the large 16th-century fortress on top of Zayachy Hill, including the Nikolsky Gate in the north wall, house rather mundane cultural and historical exhibits. The most interesting is in the Red Gate, in the kremlin's western corner, which also provides a panoramic view of city and river. The Ethnographic Museum is also on the grounds of the kremlin.
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