Volgograd-1 Railway Station

The station building was put up in 1954 on the site of the old station destroyed in the Battle of Stalingrad, to a design by Alexey Kurovsky and Sergey Briskin. The building is in the grand post-war style: symmetrical wings, a semicircular arch over the main entrance, sculptural groups at the sides and a clock tower crowned by a spire with a star. Painted ceiling panels and stucco work devoted to the defence of the city survive in the interior. In front of the station, on Privokzalnaya Square, stands the Children's Round Dance fountain: six children dancing in a ring around a crocodile, after a tale by Korney Chukovsky. The pre-war fountain was made famous by a photograph taken by Emmanuil Yevzerikhin in 1942 after a bombing raid — the intact little figures against the burning city became one of the defining images of the war. That fountain was demolished in the 1950s, and a copy was put back only in 2013. Today the square reads as a single ensemble of station and fountain.

On the map