12 April 1961 near the town of Engels, Saratov region, villagers Smelovka heard an explosion and saw the sky down to earth two parachutes. The villagers did not know then that witnessed the historic event of global importance. Now, April 12 - World Day of Cosmonautics.

Yuri Gagarin manned spacecraft "Vostok" has completed the first in the history of mankind space flight, for which the cosmonaut and was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. Place of landing the world's first cosmonaut Gagarin at the Saratov land was more than symbolic, six years before he graduated from the Saratov Industrial Technical School.

In 1965, at the landing site was an obelisk-shaped missiles soaring height of 27 meters. 1981 on a pedestal in front of the obelisk monument to Yuri Gagarin installed sculpture. Over time, the monument was planted around the alley and created an architectural complex "Gagarin field" so we could include the landing of the first cosmonaut in the tourist routes.

In 2011, the 50th anniversary of the first manned space flight to the landing site has been opened Memorial "Gallery Space". In addition to the main attraction point upwards and rocket Gagarin monument in the memorial complex includes a song dedicated to the scientist-founder of cosmonautics Konstantin Tsiolkovsky and designer SP Korolev domestic rocket, as well as bas-relief portraits of 12 astronauts. It astronauts, anyway, were the first in space exploration: German Titov, Valentina Tereshkova, Konstantin Feoktistov, Pavel Popovich, Valery Kubasov, Gennady Sarafanov Vladimir Kovalenok, Vladimir Komarov, Svetlana Savitskaya, Sergei Krikalev, Alexei Leonov and Yuri Shargin.