🖼 Korela Fortress Museum

Приозерск, Ленинградское ш., 3

A small island fortress with ramparts and stone walls, and a museum of the history of the Karelians and Swedish Kexholm.

Medieval Korela was the north-westernmost town of Rus: the Novgorodians built a wooden fortress here in 1310.
In 1610–1611 the fortress withstood a six-month siege by Delagardie's Swedes; only about a hundred defenders survived.
From 1611 to 1710 the fortress was Swedish and called Kexholm — "cuckoo island".
The Round Tower was long thought to be a Novgorodian building of 1364, but excavations in the 1970s showed it is Swedish, from the second half of the 16th century.
The tower walls are 4 metres thick at the bottom — for a height of only about 8 metres.
Besides Pugachev's family, the fortress-prison held Decembrists in the 18th–19th centuries.
The museum in the fortress has been open since 1962.

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