Voronezh sits on its river in the black-earth country of southern Russia, a fertile region of wide horizons. Its name is bound to Peter the Great, who chose the site to build the ships of his first fleet, hundreds of kilometres inland, to be floated down toward the southern seas; the episode is central to the city's identity and to its museums. Later history was harsher: Voronezh suffered severe destruction during the Second World War and was largely rebuilt, which gives its centre a mixture of surviving heritage, mid-century reconstruction and contemporary growth. Filmed in 4K, the programme follows the river and the reservoir, the churches and squares of the centre, the monuments to the shipbuilding years, and the daily life of a regional capital that carries an outsized chapter of Russian history.
