Viborg

Viborg is a small town, standing on the very border with Finland. This is about 80 miles (129km) North from St-Petersburg.

Actually it is former Finnish town, called Viipuri. You still can see inscriptions in Finnish on the shops, restaurants and other places. Finnish often come to Viborg to by products and petrol (they are several times cheaper then in Finland). Actually this town changed its national identity several times: it was established by Sweeds, then it became Russian (in 1721), then was attached to Finland (in 1811) and then (in 1940) became Russian again.

Old Clock Tower

Viborg was a beautiful town while it was under Finnish reighn, but since it has become Russian it started to fade. A lot of beautiful huge buildings are in very bad condition, but you still can feel the Power, that comes from them. It looks like city goverment do not care enough about the town. But it could be a nice european-looking place, popular tourist place etc.

When we come to Viborg and see all those Finnish people we feel shame and sadness, that our nation changed somewhen nice city into its current condition... But anyway there is something to look at there.

Street

This is one of the most remote suburbs of St-Petersburg, and, as an exception, it does not have any tzar residences. But this is a small town, located on a hilly surface, with lots of interesting and very old buildings. In 2003 it selebrates its 710 annivessary.

Town Panorama

There is an old castle standing on the island to the North-South of the town. It is the only example of West European defence architecture in whole Russia. This is one of the biggest museums of St-Petersburg surroundings. Its collection counts more then 90 000 displays. The museum is opened dayly since 11:00am till 7:00pm, except monday.

If you want to enjoy the amazing view of the town, you should go to observation deck on the top of the tower of the castle. It is opened every day.

Island

One of the sights of Viborg is Monrepo Park, located not far from the town. Park is really huge, but most part of it looks like forest. But this forest is beautiful: century-old pine-trees provide soft shade (penumbra) while you are walking by the numerous paths. When you come to a glade at the sunny day, you can smell nice fragrance of pine-tree needles, heated by the Sun.

View Form The Rock

Park is spread on the rocks, so most paths are curved and go up and down (it makes it very suitable for extreme bicycle riding). From the rocks you can enjoy a nice view of huge deep-blue lakes. It is so nice to stand on the rock, listening to the lapping of water tenth feet under you and enjoy endless sky and "pure" nature at all. There you can see the real beauty of Northern Nature. You also can notice the Nature in action: huge pieces of granite rocks that started to become a sand because of water, ice, the Sun and changes of temperature. It is impressive.

View Form The Rock

Parts of the Park, remote from the entrance are very quiet and calm. Sometimes people come there with tents and spend several days living among the rocks. You even can find special metal fastenings, on the rocks. It seems like they were installed by regular visitors.

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