(Source: http://images.esosedi.ru/sibay)

A large industrial town of Sibai lives on ore mining, and its main attraction is the quarry for copper extraction striking with its size. The huge mine is the most important thing here, and the town itself is like a sucker fish stuck on a whale feeding on it and maintaining it. If you are travelling through Bashkiria, the town is worth having a look at, so that to make your picture of the South Urals complete.

Copper is so tightly molten into the local life that the residents of Sibai offer a witty version of the origin of their town’s name: the first two letters represent the symbol of the chemical element of copper, Cuprum (“Cu”), and “Bai” means “rich” in Bashkir language. A traveler arriving in Sibai for the first time is amazed seeing not just an industrial zone, but a real town of black mountains If you remove this futuristic element, the typical post-Soviet industrial city will be revealed: grey brick houses, the traditional Park of Victory with a heroic monument and an eternal flame, a long main street - Gornyakov Avenue (“The Avenue of Miners”), a central square. There is also an exotic item: the square has a scene-pavilion decorated with unusually stylized silhouettes of the kurai flower - a hollow plant used by Bashkirs to make the eponymous national musical instrument resembling a flute. The kurai flower is one of the symbols of Bashkiria, its image often decorates facades, walls, gates and just fences in the Republic.

In addition to the copper mine, Sibai has two historical parents: the villages of Stary Sibai (Old Sibai) and Novy Sibai (New Sibai). Old Sibai has been known since the year 1663, when the settlers from Sanyap headed by a man with the surname Sibaev moved here from the Trans-Ural Region. The history of each Sibai of all three of them can be learned at the Local History Museum. Another wealth of Sibai which is quite affordable for tourists is jasper. The town also has a workshop for the processing of this gem.