The Chkalov Stairs link two embankments in the historic centre of Nizhny Novgorod. At the top, on the Upper Volga Embankment, a monument to the pilot Valery Chkalov stands by the St George Tower of the Kremlin, next to Minin and Pozharsky Square. At the bottom, on the Lower Volga Embankment, the boat Geroy stands on a pedestal.
The official name of the stairs is the Volga Stairs of 1949: they were built to honour the victory at Stalingrad. People began calling them the Chkalov Stairs after the monument, and since the 1980s that name has pushed the official one aside. The monument itself, by I. Mendelevich, was unveiled on 15 December 1940, before the stairs, and the idea of the stairs came only after it was unveiled.
Funds were allocated and a design competition announced in 1943. The winning design was by Lev Rudnev and Vladimir Munts; Rudnev is the architect of the main building of Moscow State University. The figure-of-eight shape was part of the competition design and is read as a symbol of the encirclement at Stalingrad. The first stone was laid on 27 May 1944, and construction began in 1945, carried out by the Gorkovstroy trust, the city's public works department, local organisations and 150 workers recruited from the region's districts. Deadlines slipped twice, and in 1949, to finish in time for the opening, German prisoners of war were brought in on the orders of A. M. Shulpin, chairman of the city executive committee. The stairs opened on 24 July 1949. This history was reconstructed from the archives by L. Ganyushkina in 2016.
The stairs are built of reinforced concrete with brick walls. Since the restoration of 2020–2021 the walls have been painted terracotta, the details light grey, and the stairs have architectural lighting.
The number of steps depends on who is counting, and no official survey is publicly available. Climbing from the bottom up, people count 442 steps on the right side and one more on the left; a recount in 2024 gave 443 and 444. The figure of 560 is also often quoted, but it comes out only if both sides of the figure of eight are added together. The stairs were long considered the longest in Russia, although they never held an official record. Since 2021 that title has belonged to the stairway up the Torgashinsky Ridge in Krasnoyarsk: 1,683 steps, about 1.2 km of path and a 240 m climb, listed in the Russian Book of Records.
The stairs are open around the clock and free to visit. Walking up is optional: buses 5 and 87 go to the lower stop, Kater Geroy, and buses 4, 19, 40, 52, 58 and 90 to the upper one, Ploshchad Minina i Pozharskogo. The stairs look their best at sunset and in the evening, when the lighting comes on. In winter the steps can be slippery, and access may be restricted.
From Moscow the easiest way is the Lastochka train from Kursky Station to Moskovsky Station in Nizhny Novgorod; the fastest trains take about four and a half hours.
