Why go
The confluence is the key to understanding the city: two rivers supplied a strategic setting for a fortified settlement. Its history also links princely competition with Moscow, medieval chronicle writing and the Soviet practice of naming cities after prominent cultural and political figures.
The full story
Founded as a wooden hillfort by Grand Duke Yury II in 1221, Nizhny Novgorod occupied a strategic position at the meeting of the Oka and Volga. The rivers formed natural defensive boundaries and helped explain the settlement’s importance as a stronghold. The name distinguishes it from the older Novgorod farther north. “Nizhny” means “lower”, referring to the lower lands downstream from other Russian centres. The city later became the seat of the Suzdal principality. Under Dmitry Konstantinovich, its ambitions included a stone citadel, churches and support for historical writing; the Laurentian Codex was written for him in 1377. Nizhny Novgorod joined the Grand Duchy of Moscow in 1392. A much later change of name belongs to the Soviet period: from 1932 to 1990 it was called Gorky, after the writer Maxim Gorky, who was born there.