Nizhny Novogorod is divided by the Oka River into two distinct parts. The Upper City (Russian: Нагорная часть, Nagornaya Chast) is located on the hilly eastern (right) bank of the Oka. It includes three of the eight city districts into which the city is administratively divided:
- Nizhegorodsky (the historical and administrative center of the city); Prioksky; Sovetsky.
The Lower City (Russian: Заречная часть, Zarechnaya Chast) occupies the low (western) side of the Oka, and includes five city districts:
- Kanavinsky (the site of the Nizhny Novgorod Fair and the location of the main train station); Moskovsky (home of the Sokol Aircraft Plant and its airfield); Sormovsky (where Krasnoye Sormovo and the Volga Shipyard are located); Avtozavodsky (built around the GAZ automotive plants); Leninsky.
All of the today's lower city was annexed to Nizhny Novgorod in 1929-1931.
Much of the city downtown is built in the Russian Revival and Stalin Empire styles. The dominating feature of the city skyline is the grand Kremlin (1500-11), with its red-brick towers. After Bolshevik devastation, the only ancient edifice left within the kremlin walls is the tent-like Archangel Cathedral (1624-31), first built in stone in the 13th century.
Other notable landmarks are the two great medieval abbeys. The Monastery of the Caves features the austere five-domed cathedral (1632) and two rare churches surmounted by tent roofs, dating from the 1640s. The Annunciation monastery, likewise surrounded by strong walls, has another five-domed cathedral (1649) and the Assumption church (1678). The only private house preserved from that epoch formerly belonged to the merchant Pushnikov.
Nizhny Novgorod is one of the biggest historic, cultural and scientific centers of Russia.
There are more than 600 unique historic, architectural and cultural monuments in the city; that gave grounds to UNESCO to include Nizhny Novgorod in the list of 100 cities of the world which are of great historical and cultural value.
There are about 200 culture and art institutions of regional and municipal subordination in Nizhny Novgorod.
Nizhny Novgorod, colloquially shortened to Nizhny, is, with the population of 1, 250, 615, the fifth largest city in Russia, ranking after Moscow, St. Petersburg, Novosibirsk, and Yekaterinburg. It is the economic and cultural center of the vast Volga-Vyatka economic region, and also the administrative center of Nizhny Novgorod Oblast and Volga Federal District.
From 1932 to 1990, the city was known as Gorky, after the writer Maxim Gorky who was born there.
The city is an important economic, transport and cultural center of the Russian Federation.
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