Vyborg is one of the few cities in our country that has preserved the charm of medieval European culture. Unfortunately, Vyborg is going through hard times these days: many historical buildings have not yet been restored and may soon perish completely. However, there are also some excellent examples of the careful work of restorers.
View towards the historical center of Vyborg
The problem of preserving the historical heritage of Vyborg
After the collapse of the USSR, there were very few cities left on the territory of Russia that were built by Europeans and that for a long time were in the bosom of European civilization. They can be seen in the Kaliningrad and Leningrad regions, the Republic of Karelia - in those territories that became part of the RSFSR in the 1940s.
Recently, many articles have appeared in the media talking about the catastrophic state of Vyborg. Indeed, despite the ongoing process of restoration of historical buildings, many are in a dire situation. In April 2013, an entire historical block located between Krepostnaya, Krasina, Krasnoarmeyskaya and Watchtower streets was demolished.
If ancient buildings are not restored in the near future, then we risk losing the historical part of Vyborg - a city that has absorbed Finnish, Swedish, and Russian cultures, once the second largest in Finland, famous for its cosmopolitanism. Unfortunately, the opinion is increasingly being expressed that many of Vyborg’s historic houses can no longer be restored and the only option is to demolish everything and build again.
♦ On the topic: Is it easy to travel around Russia?
In order not to be unfounded, I invite you to a short walk around Vyborg. Most of the photos of the city were taken during our day trip in July 2022. Several photographs were taken in May 2007, when I came here on an excursion from St. Petersburg; Unfortunately, most of the photos from that trip were lost along with the computer's hard drive.
Panorama of the historical part of Vyborg, view from the St. Olaf Tower of the Vyborg Castle. Photo from 2007
Peter's period
When St. Petersburg was founded by Peter I at the beginning of the 18th century in the Neva delta, Russian rulers again turned their close attention to Vyborg. To ensure the security of the future Russian capital, Vyborg had to be made its territory. Peter understood that due to the close location of Swedish troops, the situation in this region could become precarious. Already three years after the founding of St. Petersburg, the first attempts by Russian soldiers to capture the fortress by land were made. But then the Swedes did not give the opportunity to realize the royal plans and the invasion of Vyborg received a severe rebuff.
Only four years after the first attempt, the new imperial campaign was crowned with success. The Swedes had already failed at Poltava and were morally broken, and this time Peter prepared his army more thoroughly. Troops numbering 13 thousand people besieged Vyborg not only from land, but also from water areas, approaching the fortress along the still unmelted ice of the Gulf of Finland. And in the spring, 2.5 hundred military ships with cannons and artillery pieces rushed to their aid. At the beginning of the summer of 1710, Vyborg lost its position. Russia secured St. Petersburg from invasion and gained access to the Baltic Sea.
Highway A-181 “Scandinavia”
The road to Vyborg from St. Petersburg, highway A-181 “Scandinavia” is very picturesque. Now the process of its expansion is underway, so there are areas of repair. If you don’t go to Vyborg, it will lead to the Finnish border and further to Helsinki. Along the route there is a typical Karelian landscape: boulders, rocky outcrops, sand, lichens and pine trees. On the way back from Vyborg, you can stop to relax at the former Gavrilovo quarry, which is located near the road.
Slope Boulder with inscriptions
We turn off the highway to Vyborg. First come industrial zones, modern neighborhoods. Then the historical development begins. Multi-storey buildings built by Finnish and Swedish architects at the beginning of the 20th century are becoming increasingly common.
Here, on the left stands the Massinen House (Leningradskoye Shosse, 15), built according to the design of the architect Paavo Uotila in 1910 from the side of Kutuzov Boulevard and completed by Vaino Kuinanen in 1914 from the side of the current Leningradskoye Shosse. Both corps successfully survived the years of the Great Patriotic War. Ahead in the center you can see a house built by Paavo Uotila in 1907 (Leningradskoye Shosse, 12). The white building under the red roof on the right was built in 1904 according to the design of Gerhard Solberg in the German Neo-Gothic style (Leningradskoye Shosse, 16).
Leningradskoe highway in Vyborg. On the left is Massinen's house
The current building of the Vyborg Railway Station (Zheleznodorozhnaya Street)
was built in 1953. And the first wooden Vyborg Station appeared around 1905.
Vyborg railway station
How to get there
The easiest way to get to Vyborg is from St. Petersburg.
Bus No. 850 runs from the St. Petersburg metro station “Parnas” to Vyborg. The journey will take more than 2 hours. The bus arrives at the city bus station. Along the way you can enjoy views of forests, fields and lakes. St. Petersburg → Vyborg from 260 rub.
You can also get to Vyborg by regular train, which takes 2 hours and 15 minutes. For those who want to get there faster, the Lastochka high-speed commuter train runs. Travel time is 1 hour 15 minutes. Trains depart from the Finlyandsky station in St. Petersburg and arrive at the Vyborg railway station, which in itself deserves attention as an architectural monument.
St. Petersburg → Vyborg from 203 rub.
Moscow → Vyborg from 1082 rub.
A car trip from St. Petersburg to Vyborg will take only 2 hours without traffic jams. Typically, car owners prefer to drive along the Scandinavia federal highway. This six-lane road passes through pine forests and fields and leads to the border with Finland.
From Moscow to Vyborg the branded train “Lev Tolstoy” (Oktyabrsky Station) and train 160B (Leningradsky Station) will take you directly to Vyborg. The train reaches Vyborg in 9-10.5 hours.
Big Bucket Bay (Salakka-lahti)
Big Dipper Bay ( Salakka-lahti ) of the Northern Harbor was in the past the city's trading harbor; at low tide, half-rotten piles can be seen in the bay. On the opposite bank stands the building of the Druzhba Hotel (Zheleznodorozhnaya St., 5), built in 1982 according to a joint Soviet-Finnish project.
To the right of it you can see two houses from the beginning of the 20th century . The house on the left was built according to the design of the architect Karl Lindahl in 1912 (Zheleznodorozhnaya St., 2). The house on the right is an apartment and residential building, built in 1908 according to the design of architect Paavo Uotila for (Zheleznodorozhnaya St., 4).
Big Bucket Bay (Salakkalahti) and the Druzhba Hotel building
From the Bolshoy Kovsh Embankment (Embankment of the 40th anniversary of the Komsomol) there is a beautiful view of the Vyborg Market and the Vyborg Castle, between which one can see the facade of a house built in 1898 according to the design of the architect Fredrik Thesleff (Severny Val St., 11). In 1945-1998, this building housed the headquarters of the 30th Guards Army Combined Arms Red Banner Leningrad Corps , which participated in breaking the siege of Leningrad, for which it received the honorary name “Leningrad”, in the Vyborg offensive operation and during the liberation of the Baltic states.
Embankment of the Big Bucket (Embankment of the 30th Guards Corps) and Vyborg Castle Thesleff House
In North Harbor, be sure to check out the Bike Rock .
"Bike Rock" in North Harbor
Hotels
There are more than 100 hotels in Vyborg. They are designed for a wide variety of guests with almost any budget and wishes. There are also inexpensive hostels, the price of which per night is 1300-1500 rubles, and more expensive hotels, the cost of which is 2700-3500 rubles. The apartments will cost guests 10,000 rubles per day. There is only one four-star hotel in the city - Victoria. The luxurious new building is located on the shores of the Vyborg Bay. A night in a hotel costs from 5,000 rubles.
Almost all hotels offer free Wi-Fi. Many hotels (except apartments) offer free breakfast.
Market Square
Market Square is one of the most beautiful in the old part of the city. It appeared at the end of the 19th century on the site of the dismantled fortifications of the Vyborg city wall (Horned Fortress), a reminder of which is the white Round Tower .
Market Square
Vyborg market
Let's turn again to the Market Square. The current building of the Vyborg Market (Severny Val St., 2) was built in 1906 according to the design of the Swedish architect Karl Hord af Segerstadt on the site of the unfinished guest courtyard of J. Quarenghi. The building is decorated with a clock tower. During the war, the building was badly damaged and was reopened in 1957, having lost four of the seven peaked gables, which distorted the appearance of the building. The width of the main facade is about 20 meters, the length is 130 meters. At the beginning of the 20th century, the Vyborg market was the largest in Scandinavia.
Vyborg market
Vyborg market
On Market Square, a large red brick building, built in 1910 according to the design of architect Gustav Nyström (Lenin Avenue, 2), attracts attention. In the past, it housed the Vyborg branch of the Bank of Finland (Suomen Pankki), and now it houses the Education Committee.
The building of the former Vyborg branch of the Bank of Finland (Suomen Pankki), now the Education Committee Round Tower and the building of the former United Bank of the Nordic Countries
North-West restaurant building Market Square
International Business and the building of the former Vyborg branch of the Bank of Finland (Suomen Pankki)
Round Tower
The round tower , located on Market Square (Market Square, 1) is one of the “calling cards” of Vyborg. It was erected in 1547-1550. It was a rondel tower, placed 17 meters in front of the pediment of the city fortress wall to conduct enfilade artillery fire. The thickness of its walls is from 3 to 4 meters, the diameter is about 21 meters. Here the “Vyborg Treaty” was signed - an agreement on military assistance between King Charles IX and Tsar Vasily Shuisky.
After the capture of Vyborg in 1710 by the troops of Peter I, the Round Tower lost its defensive significance. Over the years, an arsenal was located here, a place for collecting taxes from visitors. After the city walls of Vyborg were torn down according to the new urban plan in 1961, a warehouse and a prison were located in the Round Tower.
♦ On the topic: Fortress structures of Vyborg: seven centuries of history of the border city
Since 1922, the Technical Club held meetings here, where all the Vyborg intelligentsia of that time gathered. A restaurant was opened at the club, the main decoration of which was the luxurious Renaissance hall. During the Great Patriotic War, when Vyborg again became Finnish for several years, a Finnish field kitchen operated here. After the war, the Tower housed a pharmacy warehouse for some time, and in 1976 a cafe was opened, and the Renaissance Hall was restored. Today, the Round Tower restaurant is located here.
The Round Tower, the Nordic United Bank building and the building housing the Nord-West restaurant The Round Tower The Round Tower
What to see in Vyborg or the most detailed report about the best city in the Leningrad region
Vyborg is definitely the most beautiful city in the Leningrad region, one of the most wonderful not only in Russia, but throughout the world, and, in general, I love it very, very much. There is somewhere to wander, something to see, and a place to have a delicious dinner after a busy day. Well, the most important thing is that of all the cities of our vast country, only Vyborg can flaunt a perfectly preserved “classical” European Old Town: with an ancient castle, with four-hundred-year-old residential buildings made of boulders, with cobblestone streets, with a tower clock counting down several centuries city time, and, of course, with a whole bunch of mysterious ancient legends and traditions. And all this splendor is located some one hundred and twenty kilometers from my native St. Petersburg, that is, literally an hour’s drive by high-speed Lastochka from the Finland Station.
In addition to all of the above, Vyborg is also an excellent illustration of modern Russia. “Our land is great and abundant” - yes, no doubt, but over the past thousand-plus years there is still “no order in it”: rampant cattle, the decline of cultural mores and the erasure of any moral guidelines, an extreme degree of dislike for its history for the sake of fleeting pleasures, and as a result - total dullness and godless greed, all this - with criminal indifference, and partly the connivance of local authorities - has led to the fact that over the past few decades this city has lost a considerable part of its architectural values, and its historical center - in the recent past, solid and harmonious - turned out to be disfigured by inclusions of tasteless modern buildings. At least invite foreigners again to “reign and rule over us”, that’s the truth...
Today I will tell you everything I know about Vyborg: the good, the bad, the happy and the not so happy, and what you probably already know without me, and what you most likely have never heard of. Go!
From time immemorial, the lands on which modern Vyborg stands have been a stumbling block between Sweden (when it was still ruled by Norman kings) and Russia (then still the Novgorod land, where, by the way, princes - descendants of the Vikings - also ruled). The first military campaigns of the Swedes on Russian lands date back to the end of the 10th century. The Novgorodians were also no strangers and, in turn, actively carried out retaliatory raids. So, for example, according to one of the legends, it was during a military campaign against Sigtuna, the political and religious center of Sweden at that time, that in 1187 the Magdeburg Gates, which now adorn one of the entrances to the St. Sophia Cathedral in Veliky Novgorod, were captured as a trophy.
In the XII-XIV centuries, the Swedes organized several crusades to the east with the aim of converting peoples loyal to Novgorod to Catholicism. During one of them (traditionally called the “Third Swedish”) in 1293, the Korelian fort, located at the mouth of the western channel of the Vuoksa River, which has disappeared by now, was destroyed. In the same year, the Swedes founded a stone castle there, near which the city of Vyborg soon grew, and the Korel land became a province of Sweden for the next four centuries.
The city was repeatedly besieged by Russian troops from the very first year of its existence, but only the army of Peter I managed to take it during the Northern War. So, from 1710, Vyborg became the center of the Vyborg province (later - the province) as part of the Russian Empire, and from 1811 - as part of the Grand Duchy of Finland. After Finland gained independence, Vyborg remained under its jurisdiction and until 1939 was the second largest and most important city after Helsinki. After World War II, Vyborg became part of the Leningrad region.
Where the name Vyborg came from is not known for certain. There are several theories about this. The most plausible of them is that the ancient Swedish name of the city, Wiiborg, consists of two Old Norse components: wii - holy, and borg - fortress. Thus, the name of the city can be translated as “Holy Fortress,” which quite clearly indicates the purpose for which the Swedes came to these lands at the end of the 13th century.
During my life I have been to Vyborg countless times. Even as a child, my grandmother and I came here: we climbed St. Olaf’s Tower, walked around Mon Repos, and even once sailed on an old boat along Protection Bay. Times were difficult, and at that time my grandmother had to borrow money from her friends in order to leave a deposit for the boat, which, to be honest, looked more like some kind of old trough with crooked oars. A strong wind was blowing, I was bailing out water, and my grandmother was rowing hard against the wind, worrying that we would be capsized by another wave coming into the side. It was 1993, Vyborg celebrated its 700th anniversary.
Years have passed, and the roles have changed: now my grandmother travels with me around the world, and I periodically worry that the car in which we are climbing some mountain road might overturn.
Back in 2013, I published a fairly detailed report about Winter Vyborg (I recommend reading it!), and in September 2014 I decided that it was time to tell everything I know about this beautiful city, climb into all its far corners and show you all its hidden crevices. It’s funny, but I prepared this article almost immediately after that trip, after which it lay in my archives for more than four years, and I only got around to finishing it now. Now it is partly an epitaph for Vyborg at that time. Over the past years, a lot has changed in the city: the Clock Tower is now hidden under the building fabric, and the legendary “forever young, forever drunk” Uncle Yura, who has been monitoring its ancient clock mechanism for several decades, has not gone up for a long time; St. Olaf's Tower is painted smooth white, and scaffolding has been removed inside it, which has become as much a symbol of the city as Vyborg Castle itself; the most beautiful graffiti on Gowing’s house is hidden behind a construction fence, and the building itself is being sold piece by piece on Avito; and some unique historical objects are irretrievably lost...
When I arrive in Vyborg, the first thing I do is go to Vodnaya Zastava Street, paved with centuries-old cobblestones, one of the oldest in the city.
Its perspective is completed by the Clock Tower - one of the main high-rise dominant features of Vyborg. It was thanks to this view that in the mid-19th century, Water Outpost Street was recognized as the most beautiful in Finland.
The lower tier of the Clock Tower was built back in 1494 (for example, just two years earlier Christopher Columbus discovered America). At that time, this building was the belfry of the nearby Vyborg Cathedral (it was destroyed during the Second World War).
The Clock Tower looks best from the west side. Its foundation is a monolithic granite rock. The lower tier of the Clock Tower is the same belfry, the walls of which, made of huge boulders, have survived practically unchanged to this day.
In the 1660s, the bell tower was repaired and built on - then an octagon appeared on the ancient quadrangular base. In 1793, another tier was added to the tower, on which an observation deck was built, which was used to monitor fires.
Officially, the Clock Tower has always remained closed to tourists. However, it was still possible to get to her observation deck: to do this, you had to go up to the small rickety porch in the same courtyard where she stood and ring the doorbell. There, in a small apartment converted from an old merchant’s shop, lived Yuri Vdovin, or simply Uncle Yura, the main keeper of Vyborg time.
For everyone, for a small reward, he opened the treasured door, behind which the staircase leading to the top of the tower was hidden; they just had to say the correct password: “Uncle Yura, allow me to climb the tower!” True, as soon as someone made a mistake and said “climb” instead of “climb,” Uncle Yura was offended: “They’re climbing a tree!” - and hid in the depths of his apartment.
Inside the tower there is a large rectangular wooden box, hiding the weights from the main city clock from prying eyes.
The treasured door, behind which a unique clock mechanism is hidden, is located at an altitude of almost a couple of tens of meters from the ground.
Vyborg has lived to the sound of the bells of the Clock Tower for at least four hundred years. Now no one can say for sure when the first clock appeared here. Local guides say that back in the early 17th century.
The last time the clock mechanism was changed was in 1848. The chronometer installed by Finnish craftsmen still works. There is not a single bearing in it: everything is on bushings, which, however, must be lubricated regularly.
In almost 170 years of operation, the watch was repaired only once - in 1945, immediately after the end of World War II.
Uncle Yura, who watched the clock until 2016, is a self-taught master.
Once upon a time, he, then still an ordinary schoolboy, was given the secrets of maintaining an ancient chronometer by the same enthusiast - Uncle Misha (Mikhail Gryaznov).
A driver by his main profession, Uncle Yura maintained the ancient mechanism with sheer enthusiasm for several decades. The city administration paid him 400 rubles a month to look after the city clock, but this money was not enough even to purchase the necessary lubricants.
Caring for an ancient mechanism is not easy. You need to wind your watch at least once every seven days. It turns out that the master looking after the mechanism cannot leave the city for more than a week.
To wind the watch, you need to use a special handle to lift two weights to a height of twenty meters: one weighing 128 kilograms, the other weighing 200. By the time you finish the ritual, you will get wet even in the bitter cold.
The error of the city clock is one to two minutes per day. The accuracy of the movement depends on the weather: in winter, when it’s cold, the gears rotate more slowly and the watch is a little behind, in summer it’s in a hurry. If you do not correct their progress every day, up to a quarter of an hour of difference can accumulate in a week.
Previously, in severe frost, Yuri brought a heater upstairs, with the help of which he tried to warm up the mechanism at least a little in order to protect it from wear.
Since 1848, the clock has stopped only four times. The first time was during the Second World War. The second was in the early 1990s, when unemployment and depression reigned in Vyborg, and even the reliable Uncle Misha, who was in charge of the tower at that time, lost faith in the future and stopped winding the clockwork. The clock stopped for the third time in 2014, shortly after my arrival, then Uncle Yura could no longer wind it for health reasons (when we climbed the tower with him, I wound the clock - it’s not an easy job, I tell you), and the local residents they grieved that the city’s “heart stopped beating”...
In the fall of 2015, the clock mechanism suddenly came to life. It was launched without outside help by Vyborg high school student Ivan Pershin, who made his way into the tower. Recently, he is the new keeper of Vyborg time.
Right now, the bell on the Clock Tower is silent again - the clock mechanism is undergoing scheduled restoration in St. Petersburg.
This bell was cast in 1793 by order of Catherine II. Its weight is almost a thousand kilograms.
From the observation deck of the Clock Tower a 360-degree panorama of Vyborg opens.
Vyborg Castle.
Ruins of the cathedral. It was destroyed in 1940 by an air bomb.
Under the arches of the cathedral was the grave of Mikael Agricola, a bishop and spiritual educator who brought the Reformation to Northern Europe and translated the Bible into Finnish.
Protective Bay and the Finland Railway Bridge. In the foreground are the ruins of Thesleff's house, built in 1898 and burned in the summer of 2014.
Vyborg port.
Vyborg Bay.
If the clock on the Clock Tower is the “heart of Vyborg,” then Vyborg Castle is definitely its soul. This is the oldest of the city fortifications. Construction of the castle began back in 1293, and until 1710 it remained an impregnable eastern outpost of Sweden.
The central place in the castle is occupied by a tower named in honor of the Norwegian king and baptist of Scandinavia, Olaf the Saint. The rock on which it is located rises 26 meters above the waters of the Vyborg Bay. The height of the tower walls is still almost 39 meters. They are crowned by a ten-meter dome.
On the opposite side of the Fortress Strait from the historical center, next to the Anninsky fortifications, there is the ancient district of Hiekka (from Finnish: “hiekka” - sand). This name is found on maps of the 18th century. Since 1933, the Hiekka district has been part of Vyborg.
Here, right on the shore of the Fortress Strait, until recently there were old military warehouses. In 2014, they were transferred from the Ministry of Defense to the balance of the city and recognized as historical monuments. Exactly one day before my arrival in Vyborg, three of the seven warehouses burned down.
Now this place looks like this.
Preserved warehouse.
Interior.
Next to the warehouses is the Finland Railway Bridge.
It appeared in 1870 during the construction of the railway from St. Petersburg to Helsinki.
In the middle of the 20th century, the bridge was rebuilt. For some reason, they decided not to demolish the granite supports that remained from the old crossing, and they still stand to this day.
Oh, no entry allowed...
The railway bridge offers a beautiful view of the Old Town. On the left is the Clock Tower, on the right is Vyborg Castle.
Trains regularly dart back and forth across the crossing.
Here "Allegro" is in a hurry from Helsinki to St. Petersburg.
But some Russian Railways electric locomotive is slowly crawling towards Finland.
Big Dipper Bay.
On its right bank stands the Druzhba Hotel. It was built in 1982 according to a joint Finnish-Soviet project and was then part of the Intourist hotel chain. Since then, nothing much has changed at the hotel, so the hotel these days is an excellent “time machine” that allows you to briefly return to the times of the USSR.
The steamship Korolenko used to be moored opposite the Druzhba; in my photographs it is still standing in its place. During the Soviet years, it served the Leningrad - Petrozavodsk - Medvezhyegorsk and Leningrad - Yaroslavl routes. Since the early 1990s, it was towed to Vyborg, where it was used as a floating hotel.
The ship burned down on the night of July 31, 2022.
In the past, Bolshoi Kovsh Bay was called Salakkalahti (translated from Finnish as “Bleak Bay”) and was used as a northern harbor for merchant ships of the Vyborg port. Then it occupied a much larger territory and extended to modern Red Square. In the second half of the 19th century, part of it was filled up, limiting it to Aleksandrovskaya Prospekt (now Leningradsky Prospekt) and Salakkalahti Street (now the 40th Anniversary of Komsomol embankment). In the first half of the 20th century, a pier was built, dividing the bay into two parts, which were later called the Big and Small Bucket.
It was to this Finnish pier that the unfortunate Korolenko was previously moored.
Finnish railway bridge.
Yes, the boat station where my grandmother and I took a boat back in 1993 is still operating.
Romance!
Quiet move.
I had lunch at the panoramic restaurant “Vkus”. The service was rude and the food was crappy. But from the open terrace of the restaurant there were pleasant views of the city.
The market square, located in the next photo, appeared at the end of the 19th century on the site of dismantled old fortifications. Nowadays, only the Round Tower, located at the far end of the square, and colored paving, repeating the location of the former defensive wall, remind of the existence of the latter.
The round tower was built in the middle of the 16th century. Its diameter is about twenty-one meters, and its shape resembles an ellipse. This is due to the different thickness of its walls: on the outer eastern side their thickness is four meters, and on the inner western side - three.
During the Russian Empire, the Round Tower was called St. Petersburg or Petrovskaya. She had another name - Fat Katerina (remember, in Tallinn there is a similar Fat Margarita?). Nowadays, in the Round Tower there is a restaurant, according to reviews, as disgusting as “Taste” (despite the fact that most of the cafes and restaurants in the historical center of Vyborg are very good).
The red building with a turret, facing the square at its end, is the Vyborg Market. It was opened in 1906, and at one time it was the largest in all of Northern Europe. Nowadays, Finns like to come here for food, alcohol and cigarettes (what a pun: we go to them in the hope that they have better quality, but they rush to us, since ours is cheaper).
The cranes of the Vyborg port, the Clock Tower and St. Olaf's Tower are visible on the horizon.
Vyborg Castle.
From the system of defensive structures of Vyborg, only two towers have survived to this day. The first is the Round Tower, which I told you about above, the second is the Town Hall Tower. The latter was built in the 1470s. At that time, Vyborg was one of the most fortified cities in Sweden - besides it, only Stockholm, Visby and Kalmar had stone fortress walls.
After the city grew and the tower lost its military significance, it was transferred to the jurisdiction of the city hall, hence its modern name.
There are several ancient stone houses in Vyborg that have been perfectly preserved.
One of them is the House on the Rock. According to legend, the town barber used to live here. The building was built on bare granite rock in the 17th century, probably on an older foundation. The house was extensively rebuilt in Soviet times, and these days bears little resemblance to the medieval one.
But there are also real medieval Swedish “fortress houses” in Vyborg, which once belonged to local burghers and have survived to this day in their almost original form. There are only four of them, and there are no such buildings anywhere else in Russia.
At the beginning of the 17th century, Vyborg, which at that time belonged to Sweden, was predominantly built up with wooden houses, and its streets were narrow and winding. At that time, the city burned out almost completely several times. After further fires that occurred in 1627 and 1628, on the instructions of the Swedish government, a new urban development plan with a rectangular grid of streets was developed. To a greater extent, it was implemented after the devastating fire of 1652, and since then the street layout of the central part of Vyborg has remained virtually unchanged. All the houses that I will talk about below were built before the implementation of this plan, and therefore are located at angles to modern streets.
The first of them is the House of the Merchant Guild of the Holy Spirit. Its exact date of construction is unknown. Researchers date it back to the 14th century, making it the oldest surviving stone building in Vyborg.
In the past, this house, built from unprocessed boulders, was part of a medieval merchant estate, which included both housing and outbuildings.
The building was once two-story: the bottom was a warehouse for goods, and the top floor, which was one large room with narrow barred windows, was residential—an external stone staircase led here. Gradually, the ground level rose, and after several centuries the first floor was below the level of the pavement, actually turning into a basement. In the 16th century, the house was acquired by the merchant guild of the Holy Spirit, who used the room on the top floor for trade negotiations.
Three dozen meters from the House of the Merchant Guild of the Holy Spirit is the Guild House. Finding it is not so easy - it is hidden in the territory of Vyborg Electric Networks, fenced with a high fence, so few people know about this building.
The guild house was built in the 16th century. It is one-story and made of granite boulders. Below is a vaulted basement.
In the past, meetings of city guilds were held in this building, at which various industrial issues were discussed. The presence of such a building in every city was determined by the legislation of the Kingdom of Sweden.
The first guild - tailors - appeared in Vyborg back in 1620. Two decades later, professional communities of shoemakers and weavers were created. Subsequently, carpenters, turners, tanners, furriers, blacksmiths, coopers, jewelers and furniture makers created their own guilds. Strict rules for organizing professional associations, which even regulated such issues as the marriage of apprentices, were abolished in Vyborg only in the 19th century.
The townsman's house, like the previous two, built of boulders, was also built in the 16th century, according to one version - in 1583, and still remains residential. Today this building is divided into two apartments. The house was rebuilt several times, so the height of the ceilings was increased, narrow loophole windows were replaced with ordinary ones, a sewer system was added, and the stove heating was replaced by central heating.
Nowadays, the Citizen's House is considered the oldest residential building in Russia.
The fourth surviving medieval “house-fortress” is the Burgher’s Estate, located exactly opposite the House on the Rock, which I told you about above. The manor complex, partially preserved to this day, consists of a three-story urban residential building and a two-story carriage house.
During this trip, I lived almost opposite the Burgher’s Estate, but for some reason I never thought of taking a photograph of it (there is only a winter photograph from the last trip).
In addition to medieval houses, the buildings of the second half of the 19th century have been well preserved in Vyborg. Stone, like this furrier's workshop.
And wooden, like these residential buildings at the far end of Fortress Street.
In this part of the city, the Finnish spirit has remained virtually unchanged, even though the last native Finn left here more than seventy years ago.
The later architecture of Vyborg is no less interesting.
“House with Pelicans”, built in 1907.
Former Trade Bank, built in 1915.
The temperance society restaurant is the first non-alcoholic catering establishment in Vyborg, built in 1890.
On the left is Red Square. The monument to Lenin is located on the site of the “Red Well”, where, according to legend, the city governor and his son, who supported the deposed king Sigismund III, were beheaded in 1599.
On the right is the former parish house of the Transfiguration Orthodox Cathedral.
Red brick buildings, formerly the Vyborg Ship Mechanical Plant.
In 1930, the building of the Vyborg Art Museum and Art School was built on the only bastion of the Vyborg fortress, the Panzerlaks. In the pre-war years, it housed an impressive collection of Finnish and European art, at the time the second largest in Finland after the Athenaeum Museum in Helsinki.
Today, a branch of the St. Petersburg Hermitage is located here.
In the park near the museum there are eight copies of ancient sculptures - Flora, Bacchus, Ceres, Vulcan, Cupid and Psyche, Venus with a butterfly, Flora and the Venus of Medicea - which appeared here on the initiative of the director of the State Hermitage Mikhail Piotrovsky.
At the base of the bastion there is a powder magazine. Its construction took place in the 1780s.
To the right of the Powder Magazine is the building of the School of National Culture, built in 1896 for the Russian male gymnasium (now School No. 1).
There are also interesting buildings from the Soviet period in Vyborg. For example, this office-residential building was built in 1980 (although, if I didn’t know this, I would be sure that its roots go back to the 1930s: the architecture is clearly Finnish).
Unfortunately, some ancient buildings of Vyborg are mercilessly erased from the city map. In their place are ugly modern pseudo-historical residential complexes.
For example, the historical quarter of merchant Seth Solberg used to be located here. More recently, seven ancient buildings in the style of neo-Gothic and neo-romanticism stood on this site, the oldest of which was built in the 18th century. Six of them had the status of objects protected by the state. Several years ago, demolition of the block suddenly began, but was never completed. Now it stands in ruins.
By the way, right across the street from this block is the very House of the Citizen (which is the oldest residential building in Russia). This is so that you understand that we are not talking about some backyards, but about the historical center itself.
Here is another sad symbol of Vyborg - the Gowing House. This is the very heart of the city, the Clock Tower is less than a hundred meters away, literally around the corner.
The Gowing House, which is often called the first building in the Northern Art Nouveau style in the Russian Empire, was built in 1903-1904 for the bookseller and publisher Victor Gowing, a Dutchman by birth. His bookstore was located on the ground floor of the building; the rest were occupied by guests.
Victor Gowing wanted not only to build a beautiful building, but also took care of its future residents: the floors and doors were made of valuable wood, the railings for the stairs were forged by hand, and all apartments had a fireplace, and each one had a different one. At all times, the house was considered the architectural pearl of Vyborg. Covered with a special plaster, which included fine granite chips, its facade did not require repair.
During Soviet times, the building abandoned by the Finns was filled with communal apartments. In the 1990s, the house was declared unsafe, moved out and sold to some hotelier. But something went wrong, and the building remained empty for the following years. Finally, the Vyborg authorities returned the house to themselves and set about saving it - they described everything that was subject to protection, right down to the door handles, and at the same time began to look for an investor to restore the unique architectural monument. When an investor was found, it turned out that all the wrought iron fences, fireplaces and decorative elements had disappeared from the building. In the summer of 2009, the house unexpectedly burned down, and parts of its interior are still periodically sold on Avito.
A few days before the fire, beautiful graffiti was painted on the side of Gowing’s house, which immediately became another of the city’s symbols.
These days it is hidden behind a high construction fence and will probably soon disappear completely.
I travel a lot around Russian cities and, coming to almost every one of them and listening to the stories of local residents about architectural monuments lost in recent years, I am amazed: how have we managed to screw up so much in just a few decades? Why are there so many single-celled cattle among our compatriots who regularly destroy our cultural heritage, partly for the sake of a long ruble, partly for the sake of some kind of animal pleasure?
Why is it that in “decaying” Europe, which television announcers love to criticize so much nowadays, no one in their wildest dreams would imagine that it is possible to tear away a historical building piece by piece, or simply burn it down in order to earn money for its restoration (which will be carried out like this - Is it better to just leave everything as it is) or build some absolutely alien pseudo-historical squalor instead? Why is it that in Finland, in the wilderness of national parks (for example, in “Linnansaari”) there are ancient wooden farms, standing open like excursion objects, unattended, inside there are dust-covered dishes, old tools and newspapers that are more than a hundred years old, and that’s all — untouched? If you open such an object with us, everything will be stolen away within a week, and the walls will be painted with balloons and it’s good if they don’t set it on fire. For example: in our national parks (for example, in “Kenozersky”), unique wooden iconostases and ancient altar doors are stolen from existing churches...
But all sorts of municipal shit is growing by leaps and bounds.
The main Orthodox church in Vyborg is the Transfiguration Cathedral.
Over the past eighteen years, it has experienced two large-scale restorations: the first - back in the late 1990s - when restorers impregnated the historical plaster with special solutions, and where it was impossible to preserve the old one - they exactly reproduced the composition of two hundred years ago, and the second - already in our days - absolutely unnecessary, when all the plaster was simply knocked down along with unique antique stucco moldings, and instead of them new ones were created - concrete ones. This second restoration cost the city budget 71 million rubles.
In my photo there is the Transfiguration Cathedral still with the old historical plaster. Tell me, does it really look so bad that it needed to be “restored” again?
Another strange project of our time is the memorial stele “City of Military Glory”, installed in Vyborg in 2011.
Similar steles are now installed in all cities bearing this honorary title. There are forty-five of them in total, and all were built according to a single standard design.
It would be better if all this money was spent on putting in order the East Vyborg fortifications on Batareinaya Hill - a complex of defensive structures created by Eduard Totleben.
Once this place was guarded by almost two hundred guns. Now the ditches are overgrown with bushes, and local residents set up their barbecues on the caponiers.
And these are the walls of the Vyborg Castle.
This is the only such structure in Russia.
Since its last large-scale reconstruction, which took place in the middle of the 16th century, its buildings have remained virtually unchanged. And most importantly, unlike most fortresses in the Leningrad region (remember, for example, Staraya Ladoga, Oreshek or Koporye), the Vyborg Castle has been completely restored and is maintained in very good condition.
Even the old plaster that has fallen off in places looks appropriate, as if it was intended to be so, and only adds some elusive medieval charm to the already atmospheric structure.
You can't come to Vyborg without climbing St. Olaf's Tower.
Its height, together with the dome, is almost fifty meters, and together with the rock on which it stands - all seventy-five. The thickness of the walls at the base is five meters, at the dome - three.
The scaffolding inside the tower, which has stood here since the 19th century, after the interfloor ceilings were destroyed by one of the fires, is another symbol of a bygone era; as of this year they are no longer there.
A wrought iron staircase leads to the observation deck.
From here, from a height of sixty-five meters, a postcard view of the Old Town opens.
Northern harbor. The Bolshoy and Maly Kovsh bays and the Finlyandsky Railway Bridge are clearly visible. In the foreground is Petrovsky Bridge. Until 2000, it was movable: its central span was double-winged.
Hotel "Druzhba" and the steamship "Korolenko" that has not yet burned down.
A fountain in the middle of the Big Dipper and “that same” boat station.
On the left is a chimney from a boiler room near the railway station. On the right is the Clock Tower.
In the foreground are the charred walls of Thesleff's house. Behind them is the tower of the Vyborg Market. Behind it is the building of the former Vyborg branch of the Bank of Finland, now the city education committee is located there.
There are old helicopters on the territory of the Annensky fortifications.
About a kilometer north of the city there is an abandoned tuberculosis sanatorium. Its main building was built back in 1914 - then there was a Russian seminary here, founded as part of the program for the Russification of Finland.
At the top of a nearby mountain stands an old water tower. In the past, it provided water to that same seminary, and during the Great Patriotic War, there was an air defense observation post on its upper platform. Nowadays, the tower, like the entire territory of the sanatorium, is abandoned.
A dark, time-worn staircase leads to its upper platform.
From here you probably have the best view of Vyborg.
The most interesting time to climb here is at sunset, when the city bridges, houses and towers are dipped in the golden tones of pre-sunset colors.
Vyborg Castle.
Clock tower, Finnish railway and Petrovsky bridges.
Over the course of more than seven centuries of its history, Vyborg has acquired a whole heap of urban legends and myths. Most of them are associated with Knut Posse, a Swedish military leader and one of the iconic commandants of Vyborg Castle.
The most famous legend describes the events that took place in 1495. Then the army of Moscow Prince Ivan III besieged Vyborg for three months. During the decisive assault, Russian soldiers managed to destroy part of the wall and capture one of the towers, but it, along with the attackers, was unexpectedly destroyed by the “Vyborg Thunder” - a powerful explosion, the causes of which are still reliably unknown. The attack failed, and after a few days the siege on the city was lifted.
According to legend, at the moment of the explosion, St. Andrew's Cross appeared in the sky over Vyborg.
According to the Swedish historian Olaf Magnus, creator of the Carta Marina, one of the earliest and most reliable maps of Northern Europe, the Russian army lifted the siege because there was a magical cave near the city called Smellen. From its depths came a terrible roar, which terrified those around him and thereby protected the city from enemies, since no one could bear this noise.
According to another version, the explosion was caused by the same Knut Posse, who was credited with the fame of a sorcerer and warlock. At the height of the siege, he allegedly brewed a “terrible potion” consisting of snakes, toads, mercury, ash and salt in a huge cauldron. When the city’s defenses were broken through, he ordered the resulting “hellish cauldron” to be taken under the walls of the tower captured by Russian soldiers, and ordered his subjects to cover their ears with wax. After this, a deafening explosion was heard.
Another legend associated with Knut Posse says that in 1500 he did not die, but flew to the Sabbath, from where the devil himself dragged him to hell. And now the legendary commandant is sometimes allowed to walk around his beloved Vyborg, where he wanders the streets at night and scares passers-by.
I'll end with this.
Finally, I really want to show you an old photograph that I accidentally found on the Internet (author unknown) while preparing this article. It shows the raised Petrovsky Bridge. Vyborg was once like this.
Don't switch!
Terraced garden
Not far from the Round Tower is the Terrace Garden , which is bounded by buildings that were part of the city estate of the 18th century (Krasnoarmeyskaya Street, 16 and 16a). Unfortunately, the good idea was completely destroyed by the terrible execution: there is a garbage dump in the garden next to the benches, the buildings on the Krasnoflotskaya Street side are in poor condition.
Terraced garden and ancient buildings Complex of buildings of the city estate of the 18th century
Terraced garden and dilapidated house on Krasnoflotskaya street
Bench near the trash heap in the Terrace Garden
Accommodation options
When planning to thoroughly get acquainted with the local beauties, consider the possibility of spending the night in the city. Numerous guidebooks can tell you where to relax in Vyborg. Mostly apartments and hostels are available to guests, so you can safely hit the road without worrying about your budget. The price for one night near the center is only about 600 rubles when sharing a room with neighbors. You can rent an apartment and also have a kitchen at your personal disposal - it will cost approximately the same amount. But a full room in a hostel in the very heart of the city costs about one and a half thousand rubles.
Sights of Progonnaya Street
From Progonnaya Street you can see the courtyard facades of the Thesleff family house (Northern Val Street, 19), built according to the design of the architects Fredrik Thesleff, Walter Thome and Claes Gylden in 1910. Next to it is a residential building (21 Severny Val Street), built in 1860 according to the design of the architect I. Johanson.
Residential house of the Teslef family
At the corner of Progonnaya and Krasnoflotskaya streets there are beautiful buildings. The two-story building on the right is the house of Lieutenant General A.A. Teslev (Progonnaya St., 12). This is a 1994 reconstruction of a mid-18th century house built for the merchant Johan Philipp Janisch.
Corner of Progonnaya and Krasnoflotskaya streets Stone wall in the courtyard
Burgher's estate
The burgher's estate (Progonnaya street, 7a) is a complex of residential and commercial buildings, the beginning of construction of which dates back to the 16th century, before the redevelopment of Vyborg, carried out in the 40s of the 17th century. The three-story Citizen's House and the two-story Karetnik, the walls of which are made of boulders, have been preserved. In essence, it was a small private fortress.
In the citizen’s house, there was a warehouse and a workshop on the ground floor, a small kitchen and meeting room on the second, and bedrooms on the third. The initially small windows were later chipped away.
In addition, on the territory of the Burgher's Estate, the remains of the foundation of a Franciscan monastery of the 15th century have been preserved. In 1979, the burgher's estate was reconstructed. Currently, it houses a tourist information center and a museum exhibition.
There are several other similar medieval buildings preserved in the city, which are small private fortresses :
- House of the merchant guild of the Holy Spirit of the 14th century (Vyborgskaya street, 8), the oldest stone building in Vyborg;
- House of a 16th-century citizen (Krepostnaya street, 13a), the oldest residential building in Russia;
- Guild house of the 16th century (Vyborgskaya street, 10).
The burgher's estate The burgher's estate (photo from 2007)
Opposite the burgher's estate there is a former warehouse (Progonnaya street, 8). The building was built in 1925 according to the design of the architect Uno Ulberg.
Former warehouse
General overview
Any more or less detailed map will tell you where the city of Vyborg is located. This is a regional center in the Leningrad region, approximately 130 kilometers away from the Northern capital in the northwest direction. Currently, the settlement is one of the resort towns. Its location is unique: Vyborg is built on the Karelian Isthmus, right on the shore of the Gulf of Finland. The mouth of the Saimaa Canal is also located here, through which ships can sail between the two powers. It’s surprising, but you can get to Vyborg by boat without going onto land, even from such distant places as Northern Savonia (a province in northeastern Finland). This is due to the complex, rich system of reservoirs connected to the Baltic Sea.
Where is the city of Vyborg? It’s really worth knowing the answer to this question if you plan to travel around Karelia or the Leningrad region, St. Petersburg. The settlement has a long history, so visiting it will be interesting for both adults and children. Local residents are proud of the unique ancient monuments erected back in the thirteenth century. The Old Town looks attractive, preserving the romantic atmosphere of the European Middle Ages. Particularly noteworthy is Monrepos, a park famous for its beautiful landscapes and magnificent manor house built in the nineteenth century.
Sights of Vodnaya Zastava Street
Having walked to the intersection with Vodnaya Zastava Street , at its end we will see the Clock Tower (Krepostnaya St., 5b), built in 1490. It represents the surviving bell tower of the Lutheran Church. The church itself was destroyed in 1940 and is now a ruin.
Vodnaya Zastava Street and view of the Clock Tower (under reconstruction, photo from 2022)
Clock Tower, photo from the 1930s. From the collection of S. Rennie
House on the cliff
On Vodnaya Zastava Street there is another interesting attraction - the “House on the Rock” (5 Vodnoi Zastava Street), or the house of the city hairdresser, built in the 17th century, probably on an older foundation. Its peculiarity is that it stands on a granite rock. This was once a large manor complex. However, it was seriously damaged in 1710, when Russian troops took Vyborg, and also during the Great Patriotic War.
House on the Rock (2007 photo)
At the corner of Progonnaya Street and Vodnaya Zastava Street there is another interesting building - the Lund House (Progonnaya Street, 6), built in 1799.
Balcony of the Lunda house, Water Gate Street
Church of St. Hyacinth, or Knight's House
Speaking about Vodnaya Zastava Street, one cannot fail to mention one more building - the Church of St. Hyacinth , or the Knight's House (4 Vodnaya Zastava Street) of the 16th century. The building was built for the school of the Franciscan monastery. In the 17th century, the building was rebuilt for a noble meeting and was named the Knight's House. Since 1802, the Catholic Cathedral of St. Hyacinth has been located here, the appearance of which is associated with Emperor Paul’s membership in the Order of Malta. Currently, the building houses an art gallery.
Church of St. Hyacinth (Knight's House) Water Outpost Street
In the meantime, let's walk further along Progonnaya and see the courtyard facade of the house built by the architect Fredrik Thesleff (Severny Val St., 11), the elegant street facade of which we have already seen from the embankment. Once again it becomes painful for our country, where even the house where the headquarters of the legendary 30th Guards Army Combined Arms Red Banner Leningrad Corps was previously located is in such a state.
Thesleff House
Let's take another look at Progonnaya Street . As you can see, it is built up with beautiful historical buildings. But, unfortunately, most of them are in a very sad state. What feelings does this photo evoke? Pain, anger at my country, which brought the ancient city to such a state. This feeling will be with me constantly in Vyborg.
Progonnaya Street
Progonnaya street
History of Vyborg: briefly about the origin of the name
The Swedes' settlement was named Wiiborg. There are many versions that interpret this name differently. The Finns, who call the city Viipuri after the legendary ferryman Vipponen, claim that the hero of ancient tales ferried the Swedes to the island in the 13th century.
The Slavic version of the city's name is associated with the inhabitants of ancient Novgorod, whose imagination was struck by the abundance of living creatures in the local forests and fish in the reservoirs.
They had no doubt that it was not without reason that the townspeople chose this unique place and called it Vyborg, from the Russian word for “choice.” The Swedes, who were the founders of the city, named it Wiiborg. The end of the name indicates that the settlement was a fortress, and the first part of the name from ancient German can be translated as Holy. You can choose the version of the history of the appearance of the name of Vyborg that appeals to you most.
House "Hackman and Co" and Northern Val
Let's take a look at Podgornaya Street . On the right we will see the house of Hackman and Co. (Severny Val St., 7), built in 1909 in the Northern Art Nouveau style, architects Claes Gylden and Uno Ulberg. The other wing of the building is located on Northern Val Street, from where a beautiful view of the Vyborg Castle opens. The owner of the building was one of the richest residents of the city, Wilhelm Hackmann. Contemporaries called this building the “Granite Palace”. Unfortunately, the exquisite interiors have not been preserved.
Podgornaya Street House "Hackman and Co." from the side of Northern Val street. Facade of the Hackman and Co. building. along Northern Val street Houses along Northern Val street, view from the Market Square
From Severny Val Street, Vyborg Castle looks very impressive.
Vyborg Castle
Significant place: both in the past and in the present
Any attentive traveler who knows the major transport hubs of our country can tell you where Vyborg is located, since the city is one of those. From the local railway station it will not be difficult to leave and visit your neighbors - a train passes here twice a day to Helsinki and the capital of our country. Regular communication has also been established with Karelian settlements and St. Petersburg, in the direction of which several dozen electric trains depart daily from early morning until late at night.
Vyborg is also a large highway connecting the Finnish capital and St. Petersburg. The city has a seaport and a factory where ships are built. The specific flavor of the settlement is ensured by its proximity to the border. This is especially noticeable in the signs: almost everything is duplicated in Finnish. And on weekends you can hear a foreign language from many guests of the city - the influx of tourists is traditionally very high, and this practically does not depend on the season.
Town Hall Square: old Town Hall, monument to Thorgils Knutsson and other buildings
Let's walk along Northern Val Street. Almost opposite the Vyborg Castle is the building of the Old Town Hall (Krepostnaya Street, 2), built in 1643 on the site of the wooden town hall building that burned down in 1642. The town hall was heavily damaged during the shelling of Vyborg by Russian troops in 1710. In the middle of the 19th century, new government offices were built, where the magistrate and boards moved.
In 1898, the building was reconstructed in the neo-Renaissance style according to the design of the architect Johan Brynolf Blomkvist. The exhibition of the Vyborg Historical and Ethnographic Museum, opened in 1895, is located here. The building was severely damaged during the Soviet-Finnish war of 1939-1940, after the end of the war it was restored as a residential building.
The building of the former (old) Town Hall
Traces of a fire in the building of the old Town Hall The building of the old Town Hall Decoration of the building of the old Town Hall
In 1908, a monument to the founder of Vyborg, Swedish Marshal Thorgils Knutsson (died 1306), was erected in front of the old Town Hall.
The history of the monument is no less tragic. In 1948, the sculpture was severely damaged during dismantling, but it miraculously escaped being melted down. 30 years later, it was discovered by employees of the Vyborg Museum of Local Lore in one of the sheds of the improvement plant of the city of Vyborg on the eastern shore of Salakka-lahti Bay. The damaged statue was transported to the Vyborg Castle, to the museum. In 1991, restoration of the monument began, and in 1993 it was opened.
Monument to Marshal Thorgils Knutsson, founder of Vyborg Monument to Thorgils Knutsson in front of the Old Town Hall
Next to the building of the old Town Hall is the house of the merchant Vekrut (Severny Val St., 3, building 1), built in the 1650s and reconstructed in 1897. On July 18, 1772, Empress Catherine II stopped there for an hour on her way to Imatra. On the side of Town Hall Square there is a cafe “Vyborg Pretzel” (I recommend it, very tasty pastries and a pleasant atmosphere).
House of the merchant Vekrut and the building of the former Town Hall House of the merchant Vekrut and the monument to Thorgils Knutsson in front of the building of the old Town Hall
Another attraction of Town Hall Square is the building of the guardhouse of the Vyborg Fortress (Yuzhny Val St., 2). In the past, a permanent guard was stationed here, locking the gates of the Vyborg city wall at night (dismantled at the end of the 19th century). It was built in 1776 and reconstructed in 1857 in the neo-Gothic style.
Guardhouse of the Vyborg Fortress Buildings on Town Hall Square: Old Town Hall, monument to Torgils Knutsson, E. Wolf's house and the Guardhouse building of the Vyborg Castle Pigeons on Town Hall Square love to eat the leftover pastries from the Vyborg Pretzel cafe
Kingdom of Sweden
The history of Vyborg Castle began at the end of the 13th century. In 1293, during the Third Swedish Crusade against the Karelians, who were allied with Veliky Novgorod, the Swedes under the command of Marshal Thorgils Knutsson founded the Vyborg Fortress on Castle Island in order to control the territory they had captured. For a long time, Vyborg Castle performed this task quite successfully. The Novgorodians did not want to come to terms with the Swedish conquests and in the 14th-16th centuries they made repeated attempts to capture the Vyborg Castle, but it remained impregnable, and the lands of the Karelian Isthmus remained in the possession of the Kingdom of Sweden for four centuries until the Northern War of 1700-1721. In the 15th century, additional defensive structures were erected at the castle, turning it into one of the most powerful and beautiful Swedish fortresses. The city of Vyborg gradually grew around the castle, which was surrounded by a powerful city wall with towers. After the Time of Troubles at the beginning of the 17th century, Russia did not wage war with Sweden. The Swedes began to feel that the threat from the east to their possessions had passed, and little attention was paid to the arrangement of fortifications in Vyborg. By the end of the 17th century, the fortress had become somewhat dilapidated.
Building of the Leningrad Regional Archive
From Town Hall Square there is a beautiful view of another interesting building, which now houses the Leningrad Regional State Archives (Sturma St., 1). At the beginning of the 20th century, it was planned to build the Orthodox Peter and Paul Military Cathedral on this site in memory of the capture of Vyborg by Russian troops, and in front of it to erect a monument to Peter I. By 1917, the cathedral building was almost completed, when the Revolution broke out in Russia and Finland gained independence.
In 1932-1933, the foundation and unfinished walls were included in the building of the Vyborg district (provincial) archive under construction. Architect Uno Ullberg designed it in the functionalist style with neoclassical elements.
Yacht club "Cape Smolyanoy" and the building of the Leningrad Regional State Archives
The building of the Vyborg Provincial Archives (Viipurin maakunta arkisto), photo from 1937
Vyborg in the 19th-20th centuries
For a whole century, the fortress city was part of Russia, being an important coastal site from where trade was carried out with Northern European states. At the beginning of the 19th century, after another Russian-Swedish war, Finland ceded to Russia, and the Vyborg province was annexed to the Principality of Finland. Factories and factories were actively built in the city; a railway from St. Petersburg to Helsingfors (Helsinki) was built through the territory of Vyborg.
The railway line that connected Helsinki with St. Petersburg, and laid through Vyborg, is still alive today. The Allegro high-speed train makes its way along the reconstructed track. Many station buildings, built in past centuries and located along the route, have been preserved and perform their functions.
The construction of the railway made it possible to more actively transport goods to sea piers and use land transport. The strategic importance of Vyborg grew; at the beginning of the 20th century, more than 30 thousand people already lived in the city. The poet Mandelstam gave an interesting description of Vyborg of this period, calling it “a stubborn and cunning town with a touch of foreignness and Swedish comfort, with rocking chairs, woolen carpets and coffee mills.”
After the October Revolution, when Finland gained independence, Vyborg remained on foreign territory. At the beginning of World War II, the trajectory of the northern borders was again changed peacefully, and Vyborg went to the USSR. Later, the Finns' attempts to regain these lands were suppressed during the attack on our country by Nazi Germany.
Sights of Fortress Street
Well, now it’s time to walk along Fortress Street , one of the central streets in the city. Here you can see both luxurious houses of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, as well as small, very modest-looking buildings of the 16th century.
Fortress Street, view from the Vyborg Castle
Houses No. 2 and 4/2 on Krepostnaya Street Krepostnaya Street Krepostnaya Street
Ruins of the old cathedral and the Clock Tower
From the side of Krepostnaya Street you can see the ruins of the old cathedral (Watch Tower Street, 6), built in 1498. Originally it was the Catholic Cathedral of the Virgin Mary and St. Olaf, then a Lutheran church, and for some time an Orthodox church. It was destroyed during the Soviet-Finnish war of 1939-1940 and has not been restored since then. All that was left of it was the Clock Tower already mentioned above.
Ruins of the old cathedral from the 15th century
Clock Tower (restoration)
Old Vyborg Cathedral, photo from the Virtuaali Viipuri website Clock tower over Vyborg, view from the Vyborg Castle
From Krepostnaya Street we will look at Podgornaya . Here you can see an interesting building - the Bishop's House (Podgornaya St., 9), where the apartments of the Vyborg bishop were located since 1647. In 1887, it was completely reconstructed; only the ground floor remained from the old house. Later another reconstruction was carried out.
Podgornaya Street Bishop's House (Podgornaya St., 9) and Former building of the Norwegian Vice-Consulate (Krepostnaya St., 6)
Let's continue our journey along Fortress Street again. Alas, alas, alas, we don’t know how to treat history with care. An ancient house, disfigured by a modern plastic window, air conditioning and a scary metal door.
House No. 6 on Krepostnaya Street
And it’s better not to look into the entrances at all... However, for our country this, unfortunately, is the norm...
The entrance to one of the houses on Krepostnaya Street
As I already wrote above, small houses of the 16th-17th centuries have been preserved on Krepostnaya Street. Many of them are very interesting with their history. For example, A.V. Suvorov, who led the work to strengthen the Russian-Swedish border, stayed several times in house No. 8a (the leftmost house in the photograph).
The next building, No. 8, is the house of the consul of Vaal , built in the 16th century and then rebuilt several times. It is famous for the fact that in 1988 the first independent television in Russia, Russian Video, was located here.
Houses on Krepostnaya Street House No. 8 on Krepostnaya Street Balcony of house No. 8a on Krepostnaya Street
Unfortunately, on Krepostnaya Street you cannot leave the feeling of melancholy: there are so many beautiful historical buildings, and almost all of them are in terrible condition. But this is the road to Vyborg Castle!
Fortress Street (panorama towards Vyborg Castle) Fortress Street
Walking a little further along Krepostnaya Street we will be faced with a truly heartbreaking sight: the ruins of the once luxurious house of Hoving , or, in another transcription, Govinga (Krepostnaya Street, 11), built in 1903-1904 in the Finnish Art Nouveau style. It is being destroyed literally before our eyes. Can we hope for a miracle, that this beautiful building will still be restored?
♦ Read more: Hoving’s House in Vyborg: restoration cannot be destroyed
Hoving House
Facade of Hoving's house
On Krepostnaya Street, another interesting building attracts attention - the former apartment building of the merchant Emil Buttengoff (Krepostnaya Street, 7), built in 1898 according to the design of the architect Johan Blomkvist. The house stands at the highest point of Fortress Street. In the past, there was a store on the ground floor and apartments above that were rented out. Now it is a residential building.
Merchant Buttenhoff's House
After the house of the merchant Buttenhof, Fortress Street goes down. There are also many interesting historical houses here. But, alas, some of them are in a dilapidated state, while others require at least cosmetic repairs. Behind houses No. 15 and 15a on Krepostnaya Street there is an entire block of demolished historical buildings , bounded by Krasin, Watchtower and Krasnoarmeyskaya streets.
Houses on Krepostnaya Street
Bastion Panzerlax
The surviving buildings of the Stone Town include the Panzerlax bastion, built at the end of the 16th century as part of the Horned Fortress. The name of the bastion is translated as “shell of the bay.” Now the building houses the Panzerlaks cafe. You can also see the remains of earthen fortifications on the streets with the telling names Northern Wall and Southern Wall.
Krasnoflotskaya street
Now let's turn onto Krasnoflotskaya Street . Some houses here have been restored, others look very pitiful. The gray two-story house on the right is the business and residential building of V. Dippel (Krasnoflotskaya street, 1), a complex of an urban estate of the second half of the 18th - early 20th centuries.
Houses on Krasnoflotskaya Street, the gray building on the right is V. Dippel’s house
House No. 4a on Krepostnaya Street stands out for its novelty
Gate of the house at Krasnoflotskaya street, 4a
And almost opposite is a wooden house of the first half of the 19th century (Krasnoflotskaya street, 3).
Residential building of the first half of the 19th century
In the gap between the houses on the side of Krasnoflotskaya Street you can see the brick wall of the carriage house of the Burgher's House, which was discussed above. Judging by the color and texture of the bricks, a small building was attached to it in the past.
Back side of the carriage house of the Burgher's House
Another dilapidated building on Krasnoflotskaya Street is house No. 6, which housed the Hunters’ Society during the Soviet years. The further fate of the house is unclear - traces of a fire can be seen in the windows.
House at Krasnoflotskaya street, 6 House No. 6 on Krasnoflotskaya street and house No. 9 on Progonnaya street Traces of a fire in the window of house No. 6 Old fence between houses No. 6 and No. 9 Krasnoflotskaya street opposite the Terrace Garden
Unique and beautiful
Today Vyborg has no equal in beauty and ancient history in this part of Russia. Previously, its serious competitors were the Baltic territories, primarily Tallinn, but as the powers in the north of our country disconnected, it was Vyborg that became the most interesting. This is a typical European city, which simply has no analogues, and this is especially noticeable in the central part. Of course, the outskirts were built in Soviet times, which greatly affects the appearance, but the center is traditionally recognized by everyone as a more than worthy place for walking. Of course, this is not St. Petersburg, but it is more interesting than many regional centers.
Churches of Vyborg
One of the few things, perhaps, in Vyborg that looks great are the Orthodox churches.
St. Elias Church (Ilyinskaya St., 1) Spaso-Preobrazhensky Cathedral (Cathedral Square, 1), photo from 2007
Weather
Vyborg is usually several degrees colder than St. Petersburg. It has a humid maritime climate that transitions to continental. The weather is influenced to some extent by the Gulf Stream. The lowest temperature in winter was −38 °C, the highest in summer was +33 °C. But such a spread does not happen every year. Vyborg is usually damp, moderately cool and slightly windy. In summer you can see the famous white nights here, just like in St. Petersburg.
About what remains “behind the scenes”
I'll stop my story here. Of course, in this article I did not talk about all the historical attractions; the historical buildings of the streets of the Watchtower, Vyborgskaya, Yuzhny Val, Red Square, Lenin Park (Esplanade Park) and many others remained. But, I think, even using the example of this small area, you were able to see that Vyborg is a very beautiful city, which is in a very depressing state (especially when compared with similar cities in neighboring Finland or the Baltic countries).
Vyborg Castle Viking Hotel (Zheleznodorozhnaya St., 10)
On the Internet I have come across many diametrically opposed posts about Vyborg. Some argue that the city is in excellent condition and has retained the charm of European ancient cities, while others point to huge losses of historical heritage and the unsatisfactory condition of the urban environment.
I tried to be objective. Alas, along with the beautiful restored buildings, my camera camera also recorded ruins. I remember well the “toy” cities of the Baltic states and Finland. Vyborg could be turned into the same “candy”, a corner of Europe in Russia, imbued with a special spirit inherent in medieval European cities. Alas, this did not happen.
For me, Vyborg became another confirmation that our people as a whole, not counting individual enthusiasts, do not value either their own or others’ historical heritage.
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What awaits a city visitor?
Having found out where Vyborg is located and arriving here, you can enjoy beautiful views of the city on the sea coast. It is especially good here in the summer, when the sultry sun warms but does not burn, because a light sea breeze disperses the air and gives pleasant coolness. The city itself is predominantly located on a peninsula with magnificent bays. Several small islands close to the mainland have been developed. The city has rugged terrain, and the highest point is 33 meters above sea level - this is Battery Mountain.
Many tourists learn about where this is – Vyborg – once they see the local picturesque surroundings in photographs. Indeed, it is difficult not to be eager to visit these places in reality. The architectural monuments are no less beautiful. Some local attractions have been preserved for a long time - they were previously used to protect the city from the enemy. Walking in these parts, you can get acquainted with the milestones of the complex history of the city, battles for which took place many times between Russians, Swedes, and Finns.
Historical facts
Vyborg was mentioned back in the eleventh century. Of course, these lands were called differently then. The area where Monrepos Park is now located, as can be seen from historical documents, was previously occupied by a small settlement. Local residents mainly fished, hunted, and cultivated the land. Karelians lived here, closely communicating with the Slavs from Novgorod. Communication through Novgorod was also maintained with Sweden and Germany, as ships regularly sailed through the Gulf of Finland.
In the twelfth century, Sweden made attempts to conquer Finnish lands, invading Karelia in 1323. In the same year, Linnan-Saari Castle was built to help in the defense of the conquered territory. Residents of Novgorod, in turn, made attempts to recapture these areas, but soon signed a peace treaty, defining the Sestra River as the border between the peoples. So Vyborg passed to the Swedes, and with it the territories beyond Vuoksa and the Saimaa region. But the eastern part of the isthmus remained with the Slavs. Conflicts broke out between neighbors more than once; at other times, peaceful trade was conducted. The year 1475 was marked by the hasty construction of a stone wall around Vyborg.
Large-scale changes
Once the most powerful Slavic city was Novgorod, gradually this status passed to Moscow, where Ivan III ruled. He is forever inscribed in history as the “gatherer of Russian lands.” As part of the “collection of lands”, it was decided to return Vyborg to the Slavs. In 1495, a ten-week siege of the city began, however, it was not very successful. The Swedes also faced problems, but were able to defend their territory. They will belong to them for another two centuries.
The final transition of Vyborg to Russian rule took place under Peter I, who founded the new capital of the country at the mouth of the Neva. It was he who launched a campaign against the city, sending 13,000 soldiers from Kotlin with artillery support across the ice, and in April adding another 250 ships to them. On June 12, 1710, the soldiers defending the fortress surrendered, and Peter I, summing up the results, said that from that moment the security of the new city was ensured. Under the influence of new trends and international trade, the settlement began to grow rapidly and became an important port, a place of trade relations with Dutch merchants and English representatives.
