Saratov Region

You will be surprised, but Saratov is the second largest city in Russia (and not St. Petersburg!). It became so on the night of January 1, 2022. Saratov annexed several dozen villages and grew five times at once, displacing St. Petersburg.

At the same time, the city has a fairly compact center, built up with cute merchant houses of the 19th century, as well as a very picturesque embankment and one of the longest bridges in Europe - it connects Saratov with the neighboring city of Engels.

Many of Saratov Region settlements used to have German names (the small village of Zorkino is still called Zurich by the locals from old memory). The Germans came here at the invitation of Empress Catherine II and some have remained to live to this day. You can see the Gothic Cyrillic alphabet on signs, century-old brick houses with hipped roofs and old Lutheran churches in the city of Marks, for example.