We move to Russia in our series on Europe’s second-tier cities

A PUNGENT ODOUR of dried fish and the cries of merchants fill the cavernous central market, which locals in this southern Russian city still lovingly refer to as “the old bazaar”. Commerce is in the blood here. “If a man doesn’t want to earn money, then what is he doing on this earth?” guffaws Galya, who hawks pork. Rows of sellers reflect a multicultural history: Armenians, Georgians, Greeks, and even Korean women peddling kimchi. Down the hill from the market, the river Don beckons; on the city’s left bank, barges with piles of grain await their departure for foreign shores. “The south is more alive,” says Inna, a fishmonger. “It’s like the fish: when she swims in clean water, her eyes sparkle.”

A city with roots as a trading hub, Rostov-on-Don has preserved its entrepreneurial spirit. “The Russian south is the model of a future Russia,” argues Sergei Smirnov, CEO of Center-Invest, the largest regional bank. “We don’t have oil, but we do have agriculture, tourism, transport and small business.” Although Russia’s GDP growth is slow at around 1.5% a year, the Rostov region is humming along at twice that pace, powered by booming farming, retooled manufacturing and an active citizenry. In Rostov-on-Don, the regional capital known simply as “Rostov” (or “Rostov Papa”, a name from its days as a criminal capital), “people bustle about and try to make things happen, which is a very big difference” from other similarly sized cities, says Natalia Zubarevich, an expert on Russia’s regions.