On April 12, 1961 near the city of Engels, Saratov region, residents of the village of Smelovka heard an explosion in the sky and saw down on the ground two parachutes. The villagers did not even suspect that witnessed the historic event of global scale. Now April 12 - world day of Astronautics.

Piloted by Yuri Gagarin space ship Vostok has completed the first in history a space flight, the astronaut, and was awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union. The landing the world's first cosmonaut Gagarin Saratov on the ground was more than symbolic, six years earlier, he graduated with honors from the Saratov industrial technical school.

In 1965 at the landing site was erected the obelisk in the form of rockets taking off the height of 27 meters. 1981 on the pedestal in front of the obelisk mounted sculptural monument to Yuri Gagarin. Over time the monument was planted Avenue and created the architectural complex "Gagarin field that led to the landing of the first cosmonaut in tourist routes.

In 2011, the 50th anniversary of the first manned flight into space at the landing site, a memorial was unveiled "Gallery space". In addition to the main attraction: skyrocket missiles and Gagarin monument in the memorial complex includes a track dedicated to a scientist-founder of Astronautics of K. E. Tsiolkovsky and domestic rocket designer Korolev S. P., and bas-relief portraits of the 12 astronauts. It's the astronauts, anyway, were the first in space exploration: Gherman Titov, Valentina Tereshkova, Konstantin Feoktistov, Pavel Popovich, Valery Kubasov, Gennady Sarafanov, Vladimir Kovalenok, Vladimir Komarov, Svetlana Savitskaya, Sergei Krikalev, the cosmonaut Aleksey Leonov and Yuri Shargin.