Start of the tour at your hotel

1. Road of life

The tour starts with driving along the Road of Life — the only supply route to the besieged city along which dozens of trains and trucks shuttled constantly from the lake coast to the city’s supply depots. The bus will stop by a cemetery where the victims of war are buried and two memorials built in the 60s to commemorate the vital role the road played in saving Leningrad from starvation.

2. Road of Life museum

The first big stop of the tour is the Road of Life museum which displays wartime relics telling of the heroic feat of the truck drivers that braved the lake’s frozen expanses under fire of enemy bombers and artillery. Next to the museum building there is an exhibition of military and transport vehicles complete with an airplane that delivered food supplies to the city.

3. Oreshek fortress

On the way to Kirovsk the bus will stop at the coast of Ladoga lake in Morozova, where you’ll get a good view of the Oreshek fortress. Located on a tiny island at the very source of Neva river, it was heroically defended by the Soviet troops throughout the whole Siege.

4. Kirovsk

Our bus will stop in this little provincial town for a meal in a restaurant that offers good quality fare.

5. Nevsky Bridgehead

Nicknamed “pyatachok” – “five kopeck coin” – this tiny patch of land about 3 square kilometers wide became a common grave for almost 50 000 Soviet soldiers, making it one of the bloodiest battlefields of the Second World War. A network of trenches you’ll be able to walk alongside is still clearly visible to date. Several memorials and a church were built on the site.

6. Diorama museum

The museum is located underneath a big bridge across the Neva river, on exactly the same place where the German fortifications and trenches along the river were successfully stormed by the Soviet infantry on January 12, 1943, opening the six-day offensive that broke the Siege. The diorama depicts the most crucial events that took place that day on an impressive 40 x 8 meter canvas. Several Soviet tanks that sank during the river crossing are standing in front of the museum’s entrance.

Drive back to your hotel