Not a town, but a city

This year Samara is preparing to celebrate its 420th anniversary, and in 2007 the city can celebrate a new milestone - its 650th anniversary. The initiator of the campaign to clarify the founding date of Samara was the deputy of the regional Duma, historian Mikhail Matveev. He proposed to consider the birth of the city in 1357, when the future Samara was visited by Moscow Metropolitan Alexy I on the way to the Horde. He predicted the founding of a pious city at the place where a certain hermit received him.