Current Time in Murmansk, Russia

Murmansk stands on the eastern shore of the Kola Bay in the far northwest of Russia, on the Kola Peninsula close to the borders with Norway and Finland. It is the largest city anywhere in the world north of the Arctic Circle, built on steep terraced slopes that climb from a deep fjord towards bare tundra hills. Despite its latitude the harbour never freezes, because a branch of the warm North Atlantic current reaches this coast, and that single fact explains the existence and the importance of the city.

Around two hundred and seventy thousand people live here, a figure that has fallen sharply since the Soviet era but still makes Murmansk the unrivalled capital of the Russian Arctic. Its port handles cargo, fishing fleets and the icebreakers that keep the Northern Sea Route open along the Siberian coast, and it is the home base of the world's only fleet of nuclear powered icebreakers. Fishing, shipbuilding, ship repair and the servicing of mining operations across the peninsula shape the local economy.

The city is young. It was founded in 1916 as Romanov on the Murman, the last town established by the Russian Empire, to receive Allied war supplies at an ice free port linked by a hastily built railway to Petrograd. It grew rapidly under Soviet industrialisation, and its greatest ordeal came in the Second World War, when Arctic convoys from Britain and the United States unloaded here under constant air attack. German forces never captured the city, but bombing destroyed most of its wooden buildings, and Murmansk was later honoured as a Hero City for its resistance.

The most famous landmark is Alyosha, a concrete soldier more than thirty metres high who looks out over the bay in memory of the defenders of the Soviet Arctic. Below him the harbour holds the icebreaker Lenin, the first nuclear powered surface ship in the world, now a museum where visitors can walk through the reactor rooms and cabins. The Church of the Saviour on the Waters, the memorial lighthouse to lost sailors and the regional museum of local lore complete the essential circuit.

Life here follows the extremes of Arctic light. The sun does not rise for about six weeks in midwinter, when the city glows under street lamps and the aurora borealis often fills the sky, and it does not set for two months in summer. Residents mark the return of the sun with a festival, and winter sports, ice fishing and hunting for the northern lights bring a growing number of visitors. Theatres, a philharmonic hall and an oceanarium provide indoor culture.

A railway and highway run south to Saint Petersburg, an airport connects the city to Moscow, and trolleybuses climb the hills. Murmansk Arctic University and marine and fisheries institutes train specialists in polar science and navigation.

Murmansk is important as Russia's gateway to the Arctic Ocean and a place where northern extremes are part of everyday life.