Current Time in Petrozavodsk, Russia

Petrozavodsk is the capital of the Republic of Karelia in north-western Russia, standing on the western shore of Lake Onega, the second largest lake in Europe. The city stretches along a gentle slope above a wide bay, surrounded by pine and birch forest, granite outcrops and countless smaller lakes and rivers. Winters are long, snowy and dark, while the short summers bring the pale nights of the north, when the sky over the lake never fully darkens.

About two hundred and eighty thousand people live here, more than a third of the population of the whole republic. The city is the administrative, industrial and cultural centre of Karelia, with shipbuilding and ship repair, machine building, timber processing, paper and food industries, along with a rapidly growing tourism sector that draws visitors to the lakes and forests of the region.

Petrozavodsk owes both its existence and its name to Peter the Great, who ordered an ironworks and cannon foundry to be built here in 1703 to supply his armies during the war with Sweden. The settlement that grew around the works was called Peter's factory, and it received city status under Catherine the Great in 1777. Metalworking remained its purpose for two centuries, and the Alexandrovsky works supplied artillery to the Russian army. The city suffered severely in the Second World War, when it was occupied by Finnish forces from 1941 until 1944, and it was substantially rebuilt afterwards in a dignified classical style.

The Onega Embankment is the pride of the city, a long lakeside promenade lined with an open-air collection of modern sculptures presented by sister cities around the world, including strikingly abstract works from Germany, the United States, Norway and France. From the pier, hydrofoils speed across the lake to Kizhi Island, a UNESCO World Heritage Site where the Transfiguration Church, built entirely of wood without nails and crowned by twenty-two silver aspen domes, stands among a remarkable collection of traditional Karelian buildings. Other excursions reach the Kivach waterfall in its nature reserve, the ancient rock carvings on the lake shore, and Marcial Waters, the first health spa in Russia, founded by Peter the Great in 1719.

Karelian, Vepsian and Finnish heritage gives the region a character distinct from central Russia. The National Museum and the Museum of Fine Arts hold folk art, icons and northern painting, and the epic songs collected in these forests inspired the Finnish national epic Kalevala, celebrated locally each winter. Regional food features fish pies with rye crust, whitefish, mushrooms, cloudberries and the small open pastries known as kalitki.

Trains run overnight to Saint Petersburg and Moscow and northwards to Murmansk, an airport serves the region, and buses and trolleybuses cover the city. Petrozavodsk State University is the leading higher education institution in the republic, alongside a conservatory and several academies.

Petrozavodsk is important as the gateway to the lakes, forests and wooden architecture of Russian Karelia.