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Petrozavodsk is the capital of the Republic of Karelia in northwestern Russia, stretched along a bay on the western shore of Lake Onega, the second largest lake in Europe. Its name means the town of Peter's works, and it is the main city of a land of forests, rivers and lakes on the border with Finland.
The town grew up around a state arms works founded on 1 September 1703 on the orders of Peter the Great and renamed in his honor a year later. The settlement around the works became a town in 1777, and in the late 18th century it gained a ring of classical stone buildings around its Round Square. From 1940 to 1956, with a break in the war years, it was the capital of the Karelo-Finnish Soviet Republic.
Today visitors stroll the long lakeside embankment past the statue of Peter the Great, explore old squares, cathedrals and gardens, and visit fine museums and theaters, including one that plays in Finnish, Karelian and Veps. Lake Onega's island of Kizhi, with its famous wooden churches, lies out on the lake.
The Onega Embankment runs along Lake Onega in the historic center of Petrozavodsk. Once a street of houses, warehouses and piers, it was known in the mid-19th century as the Great Embankment, stretching from the mouth of the Lososinka River, and today Victory Park lies along its central part.
The Monument to Peter the Great in Petrozavodsk honors the founder of the city, with a statue by Ivan Schroeder on a base by Ippolit Monighetti. Laid in 1872 for the tsar's 200th birthday and unveiled on 29 June 1873, it stands in Petrovsky Square on the shore of Lake Onega, beside the piers.
Petrozavodsk Bay is a long inlet in the northwest of Lake Onega, with the city of Petrozavodsk on its northwestern shore. Once called Solomennaya Bay, it is sheltered by the Ivanovsky Islands, fed by the Lososinka and other rivers, and joined to the open lake by a strait 2 kilometers wide.
Lenin Square in Petrozavodsk was first called the Round Square, because its buildings stand in a circle, and it is a protected ensemble of Russian provincial classicism. The statue of Peter the Great stood at its center from 1873, and the square has changed its name several times since.
Kirov Square is the main square of Petrozavodsk, the setting for the city's chief celebrations, with a small park and several listed buildings of the 18th and 19th centuries. It grew around two wooden churches of the early 18th century, and today the Music Theatre and National Theatre face onto it.
The Governor's Garden is one of the oldest parks in Petrozavodsk and a protected landscape monument in the historic center. It began as the service yard of the governor's residence on the Round Square in the late 18th century, and later governors added paths, gazebos and flower beds.
The Alexander Nevsky Cathedral in Petrozavodsk was built in 1826-1832 as the church of the Alexandrovsky cannon works, to a design by Alexander Postnikov and under the engineer Pietro Carlo Maderni. A listed 19th-century monument, it has been the cathedral of the Karelian diocese since 2000.
The Exaltation of the Cross Cathedral stands within the fence of the Zaretskoye Cemetery in Petrozavodsk, a stone church with five domes. It was built from 1848 by the architect V. V. Tukhtarov with money from the townspeople, above all the merchant Mark Pimenov, and consecrated in December 1852.
The National Museum of Karelia is the largest museum in Petrozavodsk, founded in 1871 by the Olonets governor Grigory Grigoryev. It is housed in the former governor's house of the late 18th century on Lenin Square, and it tells the story of Karelia, including that of the square itself.
The Museum of Fine Arts of the Republic of Karelia opened on 20 October 1960 in the old Olonets boys' gymnasium of 1790 in Petrozavodsk. Its more than 16,000 works range from the icons and folk art of old Karelia to Russian and Western European art, with paintings by Vasnetsov, Polenov and Repin.
The Music Theatre of the Republic of Karelia stages opera, ballet, operetta and musicals in a grand building on Kirov Square in Petrozavodsk, finished in 1955. Its portico has eight columns, and its pediment group Friendship of Peoples and other sculptures were made to designs by Sergey Konenkov.
The National Theatre of Karelia in Petrozavodsk is the only professional theater in the world that performs in Finnish, Karelian, Veps and Russian, with translation into Russian. It plays on two stages in a building first raised in 1911-1913 to a design by V. P. Lyadinsky and rebuilt in 1965.
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