What to See in Saratov - Top Sights and Attractions

The St. Peter and St. Paul Cathedral also called more formally Cathedral of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul is the cathedral of the Catholic Diocese of Saratov, located as its name indicates in Saratov, a town in Russia. Saratov was from the mid-nineteenth century, the seat of the Bishop of Tiraspol in Imperial Russia. It was not resident in Tiraspol, but had jurisdiction over southern Russia and Siberia. Then the city was populated by large minorities of Poles and Germans from the Volga, the latter being installed in the region since the second half of the eighteenth century. The first Catholic church was built in 1805 in a small town growing with settlers from throughout the Empire.

During Soviet times the church was persecuted after its dissolution will not be allowed to return to the Catholic community that occupied the old site.

So a new cathedral was consecrated to the Apostles Peter and Paul in 2000 with the presence of the apostolic nuncio and only became a cathedral in 2002.^[2]

Museum of Russian and European art. The Radishchev Museum in Saratov opened to the public on June 29, 1885. It is supposed to have been Russia's first major public art museum outside Moscow or St. Petersburg. It was founded by Alexey Bogolyubov and named after his grandfather, the 18th-century revolutionary writer Alexander Radishchev. The naming of the museum after the "first Russian revolutionary", Alexander Radishchev, was a direct challenge to the authorities: Bogolyubov had to endure a legal battle to get permission. It was the first art museum in Russia open to everybody. It was opened to the general public seven years earlier than the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow and fifteen years earlier than the Russian Museum in Saint Petersburg.

It includes work by Camille Corot, Auguste Rodin, Ivan Kramskoy, Vasily Polenov, Ilya Repin, Ivan Shishkin, Fyodor Vasilyev, Aleksandra Ekster, Pavel Kuznetsov, Aristarkh Lentulov, Robert Falk, Pyotr Konchalovsky, Martiros Saryan, Fyodor Rokotov and others. Early donors included Pavel Tretyakov and Pauline Viardot.

During the Great Patriotic War, future Director of the Belarusian National Art Museum, Alena Aladava, worked there.^[5]

"Lipki" is one of the oldest parks in Saratov, located in the historic center of the city and is its landmark. It is located between Radischeva Street, Volzhskaya Street, Sobornaya Street and Sobornaya Square. Near the park is the Church of Alleviate My Sorrows, the Conservatory, the Philharmonic Hall, a monument to N. G. Chernyshevsky, the stadium "Dinamo". From the corner of the garden begins Babushkin takeoff, overlooking the Volga.

Today "Lipki" is one of the most favorite resting places of Saratov citizens, along with the City Park. More than a thousand trees and more than 300 shrubs of 56 species grow in the garden: sweet-scented poplar, pine, hazel, several species of conifers, walnut, Amur velvet, Catalpa, rowan hybrid, bungleberry, cherry tree, lilac, horse chestnut, linden and maple.

There are 2 fountains and 2 monuments in the park: In the 1980s, there was a fountain made of glass, made at the Saratov Technical Glass Plant. In the 1990s there was a fountain with the symbol of Saratov - a sterlet. In 1999 a bust of Alexander Pushkin was unveiled to mark the 200th anniversary of his birth. In 2002 was inaugurated the monument "To the young sailors of Saratov of the Solovetsky school of the Northern Fleet in 1942-1944".

In April, the park usually closes for a full month for repairs and improvements.