Your guide to the Youth Capital

Nizhny Novgorod has been awarded the status of the Youth Capital of Russia for the whole of 2023. For the beginning of the summer travel season and, most importantly, the student holidays, we have put together a convenient route around Nizhny Novgorod for everyone who places themselves to be in the category of «youth», or just loves active recreation and is interested in contemporary culture.

We suggest starting with a place popular with young people and tourists, which has recently become the focus of a great deal of attention. This is an alleyway where over the past five years works by a variety of artists from Nizhny Novgorod and other cities have spontaneously and regularly appeared, a real patchwork quilt of street art which makes a cool backdrop for your selfies. Also, don’t miss the original «Ikea Museum» by the artist Nikita Chekhov.

Immediately to the right of the alleyway, it’s well worth stopping by for coffee and a couple of hot donuts (only 20 rubles each!) in a stylish cafe Flash. In addition to the photogenic interior and inexpensive snacks, you can regularly find small exhibitions by local artists, which the cafe’s team organises on its own initiative.

Further down Alekseevskaya Street, we reach Minin Square and the large new bookstore Knizhny Novgorod. The name is controversial for locals (Nizhny Novgorod residents really do not like it when their city is confused with Veliky Novgorod), but the place is very beautiful, and the selection of publishers and authors is more than decent. The place has already been named the Nizhny Novgorod Subscription for the high panoramic windows, bookshelves to the ceiling and similar atmosphere.

Moving on through the city’s main square and past the Kremlin, we advise you to go to the Upper Volga embankment and take a look into one of the most stylish buildings in the city, the Architect’s House, where you can find one of their regular progressive exhibitions on design and architecture, take a couple of photos of the interior, have a coffee at the Architect coffee shop, and sit in a coworking space on the third floor right next to a panoramic window overlooking the Volga and the Chkalovskaya Steps.

Go straight down from the Architect’s House to the Alexander Garden, in the upper part of which you can find the unusual Park Bistro outdoor cafe, serving coffee, lemonades and hearty lunches, where you can relax on sun beds overlooking the garden. On a summer evening, you can not only enjoy having a stroll and enjoying the views here, but also go to a concert from the Capitals of Sunsets programme. Concerts of both academic music and popular performers from all over the country are held here on the Shell stage, which was reconstructed to mark the city’s 800th anniversary.

Descending the steps and paths of the Alexander Garden will lead you unerringly to the beginning of the Nizhne-Volzhskaya embankment and to the newly formed Krasnaya Sloboda cluster. If you are already hungry again after your bite to eat at Flash, then here you will find a choice of the most diverse cuisine at the PORT food court, followed by the Terminal A Contemporary Art Centre, where you will always find exhibitions by contemporary artists. If it’s getting late, we advise you not to be in any rush to leave, because every weekend there are parties from the Capital of Sunsets. After Sunset programme, with headliners like PHARAOH or Antohi MS.

Further on from Krasnaya Sloboda along the Volga, we recommend walking or riding an electric scooter to the restored Tower on the Rowing Canal. The atmosphere of active Nizhny Novgorod reigns supreme here: people on roller skates, skateboards and bicycles ride along the paths, relax and chat on benches overlooking the Rowing Canal, or in the former judicial tower where they dine on noodles from, of course, the most youth local street food shop, Scoop.

Yachting is a particularly exciting type of water-based recreation. Groups from the Leto and Fregat yacht clubs gather here for sailing trips. As an example, the Wind Power association gathers groups of up to five people, and an accompanying instructor will tell you about safety and terminology and teach you how to set sails. Yachting adventures begin from the specially equipped Wind Power berth at the Fregat yacht club on the Rowing Channel.

To continue your route and climb back up again, we recommend taking an electric scooter or walking up, passing by Krasnaya Sloboda along the Kazan exit (the hills in our Youth capital have been created simply to keep you in good shape). The climb will take you directly to the Ferris wheel which, by the way, has a special booth for shooting videos. And at the bottom, to the left of the ticket offices, you can place an order with the robot (!) Dunyashi and, while the coffee is brewing, listen to music with her and solve a couple of riddles.

Now we go straight from the Ferris wheel to Bolshaya Pecherskaya Street, where a trip on a retro tram can become a tourist adventure in its own right, with an audio guide telling you about all the important places along the route. We suggest jumping off at the River School stop, from where it is only an eight-minute walk to the building of the former Nizhpoligraf printworks (where, by the way, the very same Harry Potter of the Rosman publishing house was printed for the whole of Russia in the noughties). Across the courtyard from Kovalikhinskaya Street, we enter the FOUNDRY* multimedia art space, where multimedia exhibitions by Nizhny Novgorod’s masters of light and audiovisual art dreamlaser are held.

Just five minutes away along Oktyabrskaya Street from Nizhpoligraf you can find an extremely aesthetic space in a small estate with a garden in the city centre, Lelkov’s art nouveau New House. The project was created by the local upscale and vintage brand Nechego_nadet, and is a combined effort by several vintage enthusiasts from the city. Here we recommend buying yourself something to remember your trip to Nizhny Novgorod: a hat, some interesting shoes, Soviet porcelain, or a vintage Armani jacket. The prices here are not too scary, and the choice is excellent.

We continue our walk along the tram tracks on Oktyabrskaya, and emerge onto one of the city’s main youth spots, the renovated square near the Salyut burger joint. A programme of festivals, markets, DJ sets and open-air evening concerts is planned here on weekends throughout the summer. On Sunday morning, a flea market spontaneously pops up here, where you can find vintage souvenirs from Nizhny Novgorod antique dealers: vinyl records, metal badges, and porcelain figurines in memory of your trip to the Capital of Sunsets.

We keep straight on and move along the tram tracks, crossing over the city’s main pedestrian street, Bolshaya Pokrovskaya. Here, at the turn to the Lykov Dam, it is worth looking into the Molodost accessories and souvenirs shop. Among other unique things, you can also find attractive themed souvenirs dedicated to Nizhny Novgorod and its landmarks.

Oktyabrskaya Street then flows into Dobrolyubova Street, and at this point we suggest turning onto Pochainsky Boulevard. It’s great to relax here on a swing overlooking the Kremlin, and just walk along the way to the cluster at 17 Pochainskaya Street, which is just gaining momentum, and now incorporates several youth clubs, trendy bars, dance schools, and also the green space of the Greenhouse floral studio and the Headquarters cultural space.

We have collected for you the best places to go for young people that can be easily combined into a single route, but there are a lot of other places around the city that you definitely should check out!