Magnitogorsk is a large Russian city that lies along the banks of the Ural River and thus has districts in both Europe and Asia. The city was founded in 1743 as one of several forts in what was then Eastern Russia. A settlement grew with the fort, and after four years the first church was built. The following decades saw rapid development, as two mining contractors secured ownership of the magnetic mountain, Magnitnaya, and thereby rich deposits of iron, which they exploited with a mine from 1759.

Despite the mining, however, the town itself remained a Cossack village with the name Magnitny through the the following 150 years, and Magnitogorsk only emerged as a city in 1929, when construction began on a metallurgical plant at Magnitnaya, which had now become the property of the state in the Soviet Union.

From the 1930s, Magnitogorsk boomed, which with the Soviet five-year plans was to be transformed into a steel-producing city following the American model of Gary and Pittsburgh. A Soviet delegation was in Ohio in 1928 to conclude development agreements, and several hundred international experts came to Magnitogorsk to direct the construction and operation of the planned steel production.

Among them were architects led by German Ernst May. May’s intention was a planned city where residents lived close to their place of work to minimize travel time. However, this could not be carried out over the entire city due to the enormous speed in the construction of the industry, but Magnitogorsk nevertheless came to stand as one of the designed Soviet industrial cities from this time.

The first blast furnace produced iron in 1932, and residential areas, tram lines etc. were built. In 1937, Magnitogorsk was given the status of a closed city, and as a result the many foreigners had to leave it. Throughout the Second World War, the city played an important role with the colossal steel production that made up a large part of the materials for the Soviet war production.

The location east of the Urals also made Magnitogorsk safe from the invading German troops, and in these years, factories were also evacuated from western Russia to the city. From the 1950s, Magnitogorsk experienced rapid growth and new buildings were constantly being built, and by the city’s 40th anniversary in 1969, Magnitogorsk had 365,000 inhabitants, palaces of culture, universities and much more. In the Russia of recent decades, Magnitogorsk has no longer been a closed city, and new churches, theme parks and other things have been built in the city of just over 400,000 citizens.

Today, for historical reasons, Magnitogorsk is a relatively new city to visit, but that also gives it a dimension you don’t find in many other places. The city has a unique architecture as the first socialist city in the Urals, and this provides a different urban plan than, for example, Russia’s many old cities. You can start with a stroll from Lenin Square, which is on the west bank of the Urals and thus in Europe. In the square you can see the city’s statue of the head of state Lenin, which stands in front of the main building of the State Technical University. From here you can walk along the boulevards Prospekt Lenina and Prospekt Metallurgov, both of which were built as some of Magnitogorsk’s splendid streets.

If you go south from Lenin Square along Prospekt Lenina, you come to the newer extensions of Magnitogorsk. Here you will find, among other things, one of the city’s largest squares, on which you can see the modern clock tower, which was inaugurated in 1979, and which thereby marked Magnitogorsk’s 50th anniversary since its foundation in 1929. The clock tower and the large administration building east of the tower are located in an axis that continues to the Tyl-Frontu monument and the Ural River.

Tyl-Frontu means Behind-Forward and is a monument that was inaugurated in 1979, where a worker looks at the steel mills in the east, while a soldier looks towards the front in the west. The monument is considered part of a trilogy, with the Motherland Calling in Volgograd and the Warrior-Liberator in Berlin’s Treptower Park being the others. The symbolism is that the sword was forged in Magnitogorsk, raised to battle in Volgograd and buried in Berlin in connection with World War II.

You can also take a nice walk along the Ural River and start at Ploshad Nosova east of Lenin Square. From Ploshad Nosova you can walk along the river, but you should also walk a few meters along the bridge and the road Ulitsa Tsentralnyj Perekhod, which is one of the places where the border between Europe and Asia runs. You can walk along the bridge over the Urals or take a tram between the continents.

North of Ploshad Nosova there is a green area, Park Veteranov, where you can see the monument Perveya Palatka, which means the First Tent. The monument consists of two parts; a hand with a piece of steel and a tent, symbolizing the tents that housed the first builders to build Magnitogorsk in the 1930s. If you go along the Urals to the south, you can go to the Ascension Cathedral, which is a beautiful church with an impressive location, which was built in the years 1991-2005.