Samara

Samara

This morning we arrived at 3am and anchored in the river to await our booked arrival time in the harbour of 8am. I felt that I was back in South America at the European Space Satellite Launch Centre at Kourou in French Guyana when I saw this Soyez Space Craft. But Samara is a major aeronautical and space engineering centre where Soyez rockets are made and shipped to French Guinea for launching commercial satellites.

Just up the road is a major square with a Yuri Gregarin holding some wings on top of a tall tower all made of metal, a symbol of the towns major industries, aviation and space engineering.

To one side of the square is the memorial to those who lived in the city and fell in battle for the country.

And all of their names are listed on the memorial.

The memorial nearby church looks authentic but like many churches, the original was destroyed by the Bolsheviks and this is a reconstruction.

During the Nazi invasion of Russia during the Great Patriotic War, the government was officially moved from Moscow to Samara and many of the diplomatic missions also moved. The government would use this building as their offices.

And just around the back is the entrance to Stalin's Bunker which was built secretly underneath the building and local residents didn't know it was there until it was opened as a tourist attraction decades after the war.

 A side elevation view of the structure showing two entrances at the top going down four storeys, then a technical level with the power plat, air conditioning, air filtration, pumps and power plants. Then another six storeys to Stalin's rooms, 39 metres below the surface.

 Some modern art at the head of the first shaft.

 The shaft used meal sections that were used to build the Moscow metro, so in fact it is a metro tunnel standing on its end.

 A view down one of the corridors.

 The wall supports.

 A gas proof door.

 Stalin's office.

     The light in his office.

 The main conference room.

A detail of the statue in the centre of the square opposite Stalin's Bunker.

And all around the square are some beautiful buildings and it is said to be the most photographed area in the city. An art deco building next door to the buyer.

 A well preserved old merchants house next door.

 An art deco government office on the other side of the bunker.

The late nineteenth century theatre over looking one side of the square.

And another rt deco style building and there are several others so it is a feast for the eyes if you like this style.

 The main city theatre. The original was built of wood but this replica was built in stone in the same art deco style but is only a few years old.

 The entrance to the theatre.

 The Catholic church.

 An interesting ld building where Tolstoy lived and besides it...

...a statue of Buratino, the character in The Golden Key, or the Adventures of Bursting by Aleksey Tolstoy.
                                                
 And just to finish the art deco theme, a merchants house used during the war as the Swedish Embassy.