Karelia is the country of the Kalevala: lakes, granite cliffs, black water and deep forest. In one day we cross three regions of Russia — from the historic centre of St Petersburg, through the Karelian Isthmus of the Leningrad Region, to the northern shore of Lake Ladoga — and fit into it a medieval fortress, a Finnish town, waterfalls and a flooded marble canyon.
It is a long day: departure at 7am, return around 11pm, some 500 kilometres out and back. In exchange you get a route most people give a whole weekend to. Your guide narrates along the way, so the driving does not turn into dead time.
The Korela Fortress at Priozersk — a Novgorod outpost on the Vuoksi, whose first stone walls went up in 1364. For a century it was Swedish Kexholm, until Peter I took it in 1710 and, so the story goes, ordered the captured Swedish armour nailed to the gates. Later it held political prisoners: the family of Yemelyan Pugachev, and the Decembrists. The round gate tower, the bastions, the powder cellars and the arsenal survive. Viewed from outside.
Sortavala — the capital of the northern Ladoga shore and Karelia’s second tourist centre after Petrozavodsk. Swedish Sordavala, Russian Serdobol, Finnish Sortavala: the town changed its name three times along with its state. From the Finnish period around ninety buildings survive from the turn of the twentieth century in the National Romantic idiom, including work by Uno Ullberg. The town sits directly on the granite outcrops of the Baltic Shield. This is also our lunch stop.
The Ahinkoski waterfalls on the Tohmajoki — four lowland cascades three to four metres high. An eco-trail runs along the bank with suspension bridges directly over the water. The 1972 film The Dawns Here Are Quiet was shot here, and a prop cabin remains from the filming of The Dark World.
The Ruskeala Mountain Park — the point of the journey. A marble canyon 460 metres long, up to 100 metres wide and more than 50 metres from the clifftop to the bottom, filled with water clear to a depth of 15–18 metres. Marble was first quarried here in 1765 under Catherine II, and by 1846 eight hundred people worked the cuttings. It is this stone that faces St Isaac’s Cathedral — Montferrand came to the quarry in person — and that paved the floors of Kazan Cathedral, the window sills of the Hermitage and the window surrounds of the Marble Palace, and later the Primorskaya and Ladozhskaya metro stations. Quarrying stopped in the early 1990s, the canyon flooded, and since 2005 it has been a tourist park. We allow around three hours here.
A trout farm — on the way back we stop at the farm shop: fish, caviar and local souvenirs.
The drive to Ruskeala and back takes up most of the day, and without a guide that is simply ten hours in a car. Here, every stretch of road carries a story: how the border with Sweden and Finland ran and shifted, what remains of Finnish Ladoga in the place names and the architecture, how Karelian marble ended up in the cathedrals of St Petersburg, and why the canyon finally went under water.
The tour is private: you travel as your own party, with your own driver and guide, with no group to assemble and no shared coach. The pace and the stops adjust to you.
Ruskeala has additional attractions with tickets sold at the park box office. The most popular is a 500-metre zip line across the canyon; in season there is a queue on the day.
| People | Price per person |
|---|---|
| 1 | $1,370 |
| 2 | $682 |
| 3 | $473 |
| 4 | $374 |
| 5 | $317 |
| 6 | $280 |
| 7 | $254 |
| 8 | $235 |
| People | Price per person |
|---|---|
| 9 | $221 |
| 10 | $210 |
| 11 | $201 |
| 12 | $193 |
| 13 | $187 |
| 14 | $182 |
| 15 | $177 |
| 16 | $174 |
Jewish St Petersburg: the Grand Choral Synagogue in the Moorish style, the history of the community in the imperial capital, its bankers and philanthropists — and how it lives today.
The essentials of St Petersburg in three hours: Palace and Senate squares, the Summer Garden and the Field of Mars, the Spit of Vasilyevsky Island and the place the city began — told through stories rather than dates.
An hour along the rivers and canals with your own guide: the Venice of the North from the water, the bridges and their superstitions, Chizhik-Pyzhik, and the floods that reshaped the city.
On foot through the imperial capital: Palace Square, Nevsky Prospect and Gostiny Dvor, the well-yards behind the grand facades, and doughnuts in a historic cafe — two hours through the heart of St Petersburg.