It occupies the northwestern corner of the city, adjacent to the Volga River.

The May Day demonstration, mentioned in The Mother by Maxim Gorky, took place in Sormovo, 1902.

The district does not have good, conveniently accessible beaches on the Volga shoreline, due to much of it being used by shipyards and floodlands.

Instead, the locals prefer to use sand beaches on several artificial lakes, which formed several decades ago in the pits left from defunct sand quarries.

Sokol Aircraft Plant and its airfield are located just south of the border of Sormovsky City District, within the neighboring Moskovsky City District of Nizhny Novgorod.