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Naberezhnye Chelny, Yar Chally in Tatar, is the second largest city of Tatarstan, with about 548,000 people on the left bank of the Kama east of Kazan. It is the home of KAMAZ, whose truck plant is one of the largest vehicle factories in the world, and from 1982 to 1988 the city was called Brezhnev.
Russian peasants from nearby Yelabuga founded a settlement here in 1626, and by the late 19th century the village of Naberezhnye Chelny was a big centre of the grain trade. It became a town in 1930, and the building of KAMAZ from the early 1970s turned a small town into a city of half a million by the late 1980s.
Visitors see the Kama shore with the Tauba Mosque and the old grain elevator, the old churches of Borovetskoye and Orlovka, and the Motherland Memorial by Ildar Khanov. The New City adds the 2.18 tower, the Tukay monument, the KamAZ builders' hill and the dolphinarium.
The Naberezhnye Chelny Ascension Cathedral, also called the Borovetsky church, is the large church of the old village of Borovetskoye, now part of the city. Built from 1872, mostly with money from the Yelabuga merchant and writer Dmitry Stakheev, it was closed in Soviet times and restored from 1989.
The Church of Saints Cosmas and Damian is the oldest building of Naberezhnye Chelny, built in 1854-1859 on the site of a burned wooden one with money from the Yelabuga merchant Ivan Stakheev. It follows a model design by Konstantin Thon in Byzantine style and is a monument of republican importance.
The Naberezhnye Chelny Grain Elevator stands by the Kama, begun by the Russian government in 1914, when the village was a big centre of the grain trade, and it was then the third largest in Russia. It is the only surviving monument of industrial architecture in the city, protected since 2002.
The Kama Riverfront is the edge of Naberezhnye Chelny on the left bank of the Kama and the Nizhnekamsk Reservoir, which was filled in 1978-1979. The Tauba Mosque and the grain elevator of 1914 stand near the water, and the city is a river port with a landing stage on the Kama.
The Tauba Mosque stands in the old part of Naberezhnye Chelny on the bank of the Kama, its name meaning repentance. Built in 1989-1992 for the 1,100th anniversary of the adoption of Islam by Volga Bulgaria, it was paid for by believers, the city and Muslim countries.
The Abuzar Mosque was built in 1991 in the ZYaB settlement of Naberezhnye Chelny to a design by the architects V. Manukyan and T. Ulatova, together with the Nurutdin madrasa. Its octagonal prayer hall rises under a low keel-shaped dome beside a three-tier minaret with a tall thin spire.
The Tufan Mosque in Naberezhnye Chelny was built from 1995 with money from patrons, among them the KAMAZ company, and opened on 16 September 2006 as the eighth mosque of the city. Designed by the architect Anas Shamsiev, it holds 210 worshippers, with halls for 160 men and 50 women.
The Gabdulla Tukay Monument in Naberezhnye Chelny honours the national poet of the Tatars and was unveiled on 22 November 2011 in a square of the New City. The six-metre work by the Kazan sculptor Vladimir Demchenko surrounds the poet with heroes of his fairy tales, such as Shurale.
The Chelny Motherland Memorial in the old part of Naberezhnye Chelny opened on 9 May 1975 for the 30th anniversary of victory, with an eternal flame and a wall naming 6,809 local people who did not return from the war. Ildar Khanov shaped the mother as a phoenix with a woman's face.
The KamAZ Builders Monument stands at the start of the truck plant's industrial site in Naberezhnye Chelny: a scraper and a bulldozer raised on a man-made hill under the flag of Tatarstan. It was set up in 1981 for the launch of the second stage of KAMAZ by the scraper team that had used them.
The 2.18 Business Center is the 24-storey cylindrical tower in the heart of the New City of Naberezhnye Chelny, seen from almost anywhere in the city. Begun in the 1980s as the main hotel, it stood unfinished through the 1990s until work resumed in 2006, and it opened in 2008 in high-tech style.
The Naberezhnye Chelny Dolphinarium, a branch of the Anapa dolphinarium, is the only permanent dolphinarium in the Volga region. Opened in 2006 in the 6-metre diving pool of the Delfin swimming baths, now filled with sea water, it seats 350 people for shows with dolphins and fur seals.
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