The Monument to Minin and Pozharsky marks Nizhny Novgorod's proud claim on the national story: the volunteer army raised here helped expel Polish-Lithuanian forces from Moscow in 1612. The figures are familiar from Moscow's Red Square monument, but here the setting is more directly tied to the uprising's origin.
It is a short stop, best folded into a walk around the Kremlin and Church of St. John the Baptist. The monument helps explain why Nizhny Novgorod sees itself not just as a trading city on the Volga, but as a place with a serious role in Russian state history.