Formerly a closed city, Saratov, is the city of Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space and was for decades a crucial military manufacturing site, and a vital part of the Soviet space program. Still a center for space research, Saratov is a major Volga port and one of the largest scientific centers in European Russia.
It is also famous in Russian cultural history as being the main centre for the ‘Volga Germans’, who were invited to come and live in Russia by Catherine the Great.
Nowadays, some 19th Century German buildings and churches still survive in the city, alongside numerous onion-domed Orthodox churches.
