Current Time in Sterlitamak, Russia

Sterlitamak lies in the Republic of Bashkortostan in the southern Urals of Russia, on the left bank of the Belaya River where the small Sterlya joins it, about a hundred and twenty kilometres south of the regional capital Ufa. The city sits on a plain at the western foot of the Ural Mountains, and its most striking natural feature is a line of isolated conical hills, the shikhans, that rise abruptly from the flat farmland nearby. Winters are long and cold, summers warm and often dry.

With roughly two hundred and seventy thousand inhabitants, Sterlitamak is the second largest city in Bashkortostan. It is one of the major chemical centres of Russia, producing soda, caustic soda, synthetic rubber, plastics and industrial chemicals, and it also has engineering works and machine-building plants. The chemical industry grew here because of the enormous limestone reserves contained in the shikhan hills and the salt deposits beneath the plain.

The town began in 1766 as a river port for the export of salt from the mines of the region, shipped down the Belaya towards the Volga. It received town status a few years later and developed slowly as a market centre for the Bashkir and Russian villages around it. For a short period in the early Soviet years it served as the capital of the Bashkir autonomous republic before the seat moved to Ufa. Industrialisation during and after the Second World War, when factories were evacuated eastwards, changed the town completely, and rows of Soviet apartment blocks and broad avenues spread across the plain around the old centre.

The shikhans are the great attraction of the area. These lonely hills, Toratau, Yuraktau and Kushtau, are the remains of coral reefs formed in a warm sea some three hundred million years ago, and they contain marine fossils in abundance. They are sacred in Bashkir tradition, feature in local legends, and have become symbols of the region, with Toratau appearing on the city's imagery. In recent years they have also been at the centre of a well-known environmental campaign to protect them from quarrying.

Within the city, tree-lined boulevards, fountains, a large central park and the Ashkadar riverside offer places to walk, and the local history museum, art gallery and the Bashkir and Russian drama theatres provide cultural life. The city is proud of its philharmonic orchestra and its sporting traditions. Bashkir culture is present in food such as beshbarmak and honey, in music played on the kurai flute, and in the annual Sabantuy festival that follows the spring sowing.

Trams, buses and trolleybuses serve the city, a railway and highway connect it to Ufa and to Orenburg, and the nearest airport is in the capital. Several institutes, including a branch of Bashkir State University and technical colleges, train chemists and engineers for local industry.

Sterlitamak is notable as an industrial city set beside some of the most unusual and beautiful landforms in European Russia.