The Road of Life: museum, lighthouse and Ladoga

⏱ 9 h🚶 2.5 km + 🚆🚕🍽 1📍 4 stops

🐢 A little — under 3 km

By commuter train to the shore of Ladoga, where the Road of Life ran during the Siege: a museum with lorries and a boat, the Osinovets Lighthouse, wind over the lake and the “Broken Ring” memorial.

👶 With kids🏛 History and architecture🌳 Parks and nature🚆 Out of town

👶 7–12, 13+ years · ✗ hard with a stroller

Around the museum and on the shore it is dirt, sand and rocks, and the “Broken Ring” can only be reached by car. Inconvenient with a stroller.

🗺 Open in Yandex Maps (with transit)

Getting there

🏛 Finlyandsky Station and Locomotive N2-293

Санкт-Петербург, пл. Ленина, 6

Steam locomotive N2-293 at Finlyandsky Station. The museum is closed on Monday and Tuesday — go Wednesday to Sunday

🚆 by suburban train to Road of Life Museum

Finlyandsky Station: train to the terminus Ladozhskoye Ozero at 07:11, 08:18 or 10:40 (≈1 h 20 min), ≈7 min on foot from the station

1
🖼 Road of Life Museum
Ладожское Озеро, ш. Дорога Жизни, 58
🎟 ticket
A museum by Lake Ladoga in the area where the Siege-era Road of Life began, with military vehicles and exhibition halls.
The museum is open 10:00–18:00, ticket office and entry until 17:15; tours by phone. Outdoors there are lorries (polutorki), guns and a pavilion with the “Maly Okhotnik” boat
📖 More about the placeCollapse
© Красный · CC BY-SA 4.0
© Красный · CC BY-SA 4.0
© Красный · CC BY-SA 4.0
© SokOs · CC0
- The museum opened in November 1968 as a branch of the Central Naval Museum; at first it occupied two rooms in the village school.
- During the war the museum building housed a bakery and the headquarters of the Osinovets naval base of the Ladoga Flotilla.
- The GAZ-AA "polutorka" trucks for the exhibition were restored and donated to the museum by the Gorky Automobile Plant.
- The tugboat Izhorets-8 is moored for good by the museum, and a Li-2 transport aircraft stands on the vehicle display ground.
- Some of the exhibits were raised from the bottom of Ladoga by search teams.
- Inside there is a wartime truck simulator: you can "drive" a food convoy across the ice under fire.
🚶 on foot
2
🌅 Osinovets Lighthouse and the Ladoga Shore
Ладожское Озеро, мыс Осиновец
The red-and-white striped lighthouse tower above a sandy cape, with a wide view of Lake Ladoga.
The tallest lighthouse on Ladoga (70 m) — the grounds are fenced off, so look at it from the shore at a distance. From here in 1941–1943 ships and the ice road to Kobona set out; the cape is cold in wind — bring a hat
📖 More about the placeCollapse
© Uz1awa · CC BY-SA 4.0
© deepskyobject · CC BY-SA 2.0
- The lighthouse took five years to build, from 1905 to 1910: the contractor who won the tender went bankrupt, and it was finished on modest state money.
- The light burns 74 m above lake level, and 366 steps lead to the top.
- Osinovets Lighthouse is among the ten tallest traditional lighthouses in the world.
- From 1987 to 2010 Sergei Shulyatyev served here — the oldest lighthouse keeper in Russia.
- The lighthouse belongs to the Ministry of Defence, so you cannot approach it.
🚶 on foot
3
☕️ Café "At the Lighthouse"
Ладожское Озеро, Осиновецкая ул., 1 (база «Мир маяков»)
▮▮▮▯▯
Lunch with a view of Ladoga; the menu is small, and the hours in autumn are best checked by phone. Fallback — sandwiches you bring with you
🍴 A panoramic 50-seat café at the Mir Mayakov base, a couple of steps from Osinovets Lighthouse, with a view of Ladoga; service is quick. What to order: a hot dish and the soup of the day — the menu isn't published online, so ask by phone.
🚕 taxi from the lighthouse ≈10 min
4
🏛 Broken Ring Memorial
Коккорево, ш. Дорога Жизни
A memorial right on the shore of Ladoga — a quiet place with a view of the open lake.
Two concrete arches from 1966, where the ice road began
📖 More about the placeCollapse
© Vitold Muratov · CC BY-SA 4.0
- The memorial opened on 29 October 1966; its authors are architect Viktor Filippov and sculptor Konstantin Simun.
- Each concrete half-arch weighs 32 tonnes and rises 7 metres; the gap between them is the Road of Life itself.
- Tyre tracks of vehicles are imprinted in the concrete of the platform under the arches.
- The memorial stands on Vaganovsky Spusk, from where convoys set off across the ice, 30 km to the eastern shore.
- In 2015 an Eternal Flame brought from the Piskaryovskoye Cemetery was lit under the arches.
- The annual winter "Road of Life" marathon starts from here.

↩️ Getting back: Taxi to Ladozhskoye Ozero station (≈10 min) for a train to Finlyandsky Station at 14:55, 16:04 or 18:04 (≈1 h 20 min) (October 2026 timetable)