Karelia

Picturesque skerries of Lake Ladoga and turbulent mountain rivers. Modern spas and old monasteries. Convenient transportation, proximity to St. Petersburg and to Finland. Rich historic, cultural and natural heritage.
The history and culture of the Karelia are an outcome of the mingling over the centuries of the fates of different peoples that have lived long on this land. The Finns, Veps, Karelians, Russians - each made its contribution to the general history and, culture of the region.
 
The Karelian Republic offers a big choice of itineraries to meet very different tastes. The number of cultural, historic and natural sites to interest the visitor amounts to 4,000. It is no accident that every year this region is visited by 380,000 tourists from all parts of the world. Some of them choose the privacy of the Valaam Archipelago with its amazing flora (more than 460 species) and the intense spiritual life of the Monastery of the Transfiguration of Christ. Others prefer a trip to the little island of Klzhi, lost in the vast spaces of Lake Onega, which produces a striking impression with its museum of Russian wooden architecture. Some would spend hours admiring the waterfall "Kivach", the second largest in Europe (10.7 metres), a landmark in the tremendously big national park of the same name, with an area of 10,000 hectares, where lovers of ecological tourism find surviving indigenous trees without effort. However, all of them, while selecting one of the proposed itineraries, will agree about one main thing: this is a land which one will want to visit again and again.
The Karelia is so big and many-faceted that almost all kinds of tourism are developed here. Sport fishing on the Hiitolanioki river, tours on horseback, visiting natural and national parks (Ladoga. Skerries, Paanajarvi and Vodlozeraki), acquaintance with ancient petroglyphs on the eastern shore of the Onega and the White Sea, interesting excursions about the capital, Petrozavodsk, and the Valaam island are only a few of the different possibilities.

The Karelia continues to develop the tourism infrastructure, with the number of comfortable rooms in hotels increasing annually by 10 per cent, while new sites (hotels, campings and amusement parks) are being built all over the region. One of them, the "Karelia" theme park, representing all the variety of the area in miniature, promises to be a new tourist hit.

The Karelia means an endless choice of entertainments.