Khvalynsk is a river port

Port

A port is a location on a coast or shore containing one or more harbors where ships can dock and transfer people or cargo to or from land....

 town in Saratov Oblast

Saratov Oblast

Saratov Oblast is a federal subject of Russia , located in the Volga Federal District. Its administrative center is the city of Saratov. Population: -Demographics:Population:...

, Russia

Russia

Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

, located by the Volga River

Volga River

The Volga is the largest river in Europe in terms of length, discharge, and watershed. It flows through central Russia, and is widely viewed as the national river of Russia. Out of the twenty largest cities of Russia, eleven, including the capital Moscow, are situated in the Volga's drainage...

. Population: 16,000 (1974).

It was founded in 1556 as a Russian outpost on the Sosnovy Island on the Volga. In 1606, the whole settlement was relocated to the spot of today's Khvalynsk and came to be known as Sosnovy Ostrov . In 1780, the settlement was granted uyezd town status and renamed Khvalynsk.

Its name (as well as the old name of the Caspian Sea

Caspian Sea

The Caspian Sea is the largest enclosed body of water on Earth by area, variously classed as the world's largest lake or a full-fledged sea. The sea has a surface area of and a volume of...

, "Khvalyn Sea") is derived from the name "Khwalis"

Khvalisy

The Khvalisy were a tribe mentioned in old Russian chronicles. August Bielkowski conjectured that Khvalisy referred to the same people called "Khalyzians" by the Byzantine chroniclers....

 for the inhabitants of Xvārēzm

Khwarezm

Khwarezm, or Chorasmia, is a large oasis region on the Amu Darya river delta in western Central Asia, which borders to the north the Aral Sea, to the east the Kyzylkum desert, to the south the Karakum desert and to the west the Ustyurt Plateau...

. Khvalynsk culture

Khvalynsk culture

The Khvalynsk culture was an Eneolithic culture of the first half of the 5th millennium BC, discovered at Khvalynsk on the Volga in Saratov Oblast, Russia. The culture also is termed the Middle Eneolithic or Developed Eneolithic or Proto-kurgan...

 is named after the town.

In the 18th–19th centuries, Khvalynsk was known as a local center for trading bread

Bread

Bread is a staple food prepared by cooking a dough of flour and water and often additional ingredients. Doughs are usually baked, but in some cuisines breads are steamed , fried , or baked on an unoiled frying pan . It may be leavened or unleavened...

 and agricultural

Agriculture

Agriculture is the cultivation of animals, plants, fungi and other life forms for food, fiber, and other products used to sustain life. Agriculture was the key implement in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that nurtured the...

 produce. It was also one of the centers of the Old Believers

Old Believers

In the context of Russian Orthodox church history, the Old Believers separated after 1666 from the official Russian Orthodox Church as a protest against church reforms introduced by Patriarch Nikon between 1652–66...

. Some scholars believe that Khvalynsk was used by Nikolai Gogol

Nikolai Gogol

Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol was a Ukrainian-born Russian dramatist and novelist.Considered by his contemporaries one of the preeminent figures of the natural school of Russian literary realism, later critics have found in Gogol's work a fundamentally romantic sensibility, with strains of Surrealism...

 as a setting for his play The Government Inspector.

Khvalynsk is the birthplace of the artist Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin

Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin

Kuzma Sergeevich Petrov-Vodkin, was an important Russian and Soviet painter and writer.-Early years:...

and his museum has been established there in 1995.