Monument to Alexander Zass

The monument to the legendary circus athlete Alexander Ivanovich Sass, who went down in history as “Russian Samson”, is located next to the circus building in Orenburg. This place was chosen for the monument, because it was here that Sass demonstrated his first power number in 1908. Exactly one hundred years after that performance, the opening of the monument perpetuated the memory of this amazing man.

With his fairly ordinary physical data - not too high height and weight, he managed to create his own training system, which was very different from the usual method of training strongmen. Thanks to this, he achieved outstanding results - he could wear a horse or piano in the arena with musicians sitting on his lid, he could catch a 90-kilogram core flying out of a circus cannon with his hands, he could hold a stone weighing half a ton lying on a board studded with nails. And this is just a small part of his list of incredible numbers.

During the First World War, Alexander Sass fought in Europe, was captured more than once, and after another escape he was in Hungary, where he entered the circus troupe of a touring circus. So he gained worldwide fame under the pseudonym "Samson" and became famous as "the strongest man on Earth."