Almost midway between Samara and Volgograd on the River Volga is Saratov. Although a city of the Golden Horde once stood here, the modern city is considered to have been founded by the Russians in the late 16th century to protect the country’s southern borders.  Before the Second World War, like neighbouring Engels, Samara was a centre of the Volga Germans, ethnic Germans who had lived in Russia for generations since being invited by Catherine the Great. In a field outside the city on 12 April 1961, the world’s first man in space, Yuri Gagarin, fell to earth and there is now a monument to mark the historic event.