Les meilleurs hôtels à Voronezh

The Voronezh River, which splits the southern Russian city of Voronezh, served as a virtual barricade to the Germans during the Second World War. Though the Nazis werecontained to the river's right bank during the siege of the Summer of `42, they still managed to destroy about 90 percent of the city's major buildings. Only Stalingrad and Sevastopol received worse damage at the hands of the enemy. A major city of the Central Black Soil Region, Voronezh's proximity to waterways flowing into the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov has long given it a strategic and militaryimportance. Peter the Great established shipyards there to build the first Russian naval fleet in the 1690s; he sailed from Voronezh at the helm of the first Russian warship in 1696. Peter the Great is also credited with introducing the potato as a crop to this region, one of Russia's richest agricultural areas. The city has also often served as a diplomatic crossroads, where ambassadors met and prisoners of war were exchanged. Less diplomatic was the treatment of Voronezh's Jews, who were forced out or killed during the pogroms of the early twentieth century. Thought to date back to the 11th century, this city of a million has long been a stronghold for trade and agriculture as well as shipping. Its bitter legacy as a victim of war remains one of its strongest drawing cards for visitors, who tour such local landmarks as the Army Museum of the Great Patriotic War, which tells the story of the German attack that crippled, but did not destroy, this historic city.