Volgograd carries four cities in one: the Golden Horde steppe, the 1589 fortress of Tsaritsyn, the German colony of Sarepta, and the Stalingrad rebuilt from rubble after 1943. These three days follow that layering on foot and by metrotram.
Two floors in the 1903 men's gymnasium hold Sarmatian gold harness fittings, Golden Horde coins struck at Sarai-Berke and the charter founding Tsaritsyn in 1589. Open 10:00–18:00, closed Monday, last tickets 17:15.
Tsaritsyn's first stone building, raised in 1664 over a wooden predecessor, dynamited in 1932 and rebuilt on its original footprint between 1995 and 2000. The lower crypt shows excavated 17th-century foundation brickwork.
A walled Moravian Brethren colony founded in 1765 by German settlers 30 km south of the centre: 26 surviving 18th-century buildings, the Kirche with its 1910 organ, mustard-mill cellars and a restored apothecary. Closed Monday.
The 40-metre arch marks where the canal, dug between 1948 and 1952 largely by prison and POW labour, meets the Volga. Lenin's 27-metre statue stands on the plinth that carried Stalin's figure until 1961. Barges lock through hourly.
The 1903 Repnikov merchant mansion covers the 1918–19 defence of Tsaritsyn: armoured-train models, cavalry sabres of Budyonny's First Horse Army, White Army maps and the propaganda posters printed in the besieged city.
A 26-metre obelisk over the mass grave of 55 Red Army defenders, an eternal flame burning since 1963, and the shell-scarred poplar that stood through the winter of 1942–43 — effectively the only tree left alive in the centre.
Stalinist-baroque building gifted by East Germany for Stalin's 70th birthday and opened in 1954, topped by Vera Mukhina's last sculpture. Original Zeiss projector, marble foyer, stained glass of Soviet aviation. Shows hourly.
The 1952 granite staircase and colonnade were rebuilt directly over the crossing point where the 13th Guards Rifle Division landed under fire in September 1942. The river station and the sailors' memorial sit at the foot.
In the department-store basement where Field Marshal Paulus surrendered on 31 January 1943. His bunk, the staff room, the switchboard and the German field kitchen are reconstructed from wartime photographs. Closed Monday.
The 1984 underground tramway runs deep marble stations built to full metro standard before surfacing north of Pionerskaya. Soviet-era mosaics and lettering survive intact. A single ride costs about 35 RUB, paid on board.
Red-brick pseudo-Russian church of 1899 in the old southern suburb, converted into a bakery under Soviet rule and returned to worship in 1946, when it became the diocesan cathedral. Interior icons date from that restoration.
The 1897 fire watchtower on Komsomolskaya is one of a handful of pre-revolutionary structures to survive the battle. Around it run the merchant streets of old Tsaritsyn, with 1890s brick houses rebuilt on their original lines.