Neva

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The River Neva (Нева́) is a 74-km-long Russian river flowing from Lake Ladoga (Ладожское Озеро — Ladozhskoye Ozero) through the Karelian Isthmus (Карельский Перешеек — Karelskii Peresheyek) and the city of Saint Petersburg (Санкт Петербург — Sankt Peterburg) to the Gulf of Finland (Финский Залив — Finskii Zaliv). In the mouth of the river a flood-protection barrier is currently being built to avoid flooding of St. Petersburg due to storm-surges in the Gulf of Finland. Despite its modest length, the Neva is in terms of discharge one of the major rivers of Europe.

In the Middle Ages the wide and navigable river had great importance as a link between the Baltics and the Volga portages leading to the Orient. It was a site of the famous Battle of the Neva (1240).

During the 16th century the mouth of the Neva was the site of the Swedish fortress Nyen, and the inlet to the Ladoga of the Russian fortress Oreshek, later renamed Shlisselburg. The former was replaced with the Peter and Paul Fortress (Петропавловская Крепость — Petropavlovskaya Krepost') in 1703. Standing on the Hare Island (Заячий Остров — Zayachii Ostrov), the fortress is considered the first structure of present-day St Petersburg.

Grigori Rasputin drowned in the Neva in 1916.

Image:Neva--etching-large-1600.jpg

Neva was the name of a 200-foot-long (61-meter), three-masted sloop-of-war, the first Russian ship to circumnavigate the globe in 1804 under the command of Lieutenant Commander Urey Fedorovich Lisianski. The Russian poet Anna Akhmatova included the Neva in many of her poems.

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Navigation

The Neva is the most northwestern part of the Volga-Baltic Waterway, the connection between the Volga River, Lake Onega, Lake Ladoga, and the Baltic Sea. This waterway is navigable for even the largest inland vessels, and it is an important part of the inland shipping connection between St. Petersburg and Moscow. Many passenger vessels share this waterway with large transport ships. [1]

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