Oreshek Fortress
Today it is part of the UNESCO World Heritage site Historic Centre of Saint Petersburg and Related Groups of Monuments.
After a series of conflicts, a peace treaty was signed at Oreshek on August 12, 1323 between Sweden and Grand Prince Yury and the Novgorod Republic.
The existing small citadel was demolished and a new stone fortress with seven towers was constructed, which occupied almost the complete island.
[4] During the Livonian War in 1582, Swedish troops led by Pontus De La Gardie almost captured the fortress.
During that time very little was done to maintain the fortress in good order, and the experts coming to Nöteborg to do inspections warned the crown of its deterioration.
[4] During the Ingrian campaign of tsar Alexei Mikhailovich in June 1656, the fortress came under a siege by voevoda Pyotr Potemkin, known as the Battle of Nöteborg, which lasted until November 1656 with no success.
After heavy artillery fire and 13 hours of fighting inside the fortress, the Swedish commandant finally agreed to capitulate on honorable conditions.
[6] In 1800-1870, the fortress held a probable total of 52 political prisoners, including Wilhelm Küchelbecker, and Mikhail Bakunin, most for short periods, though the Polish rebel, Walerian Łukasiński was in solitary confinement there for 38 years.
[7] Lenin's brother, Aleksandr Ulyanov, and four others involved in a plot to kill Alexander III were hanged in the fortress in 1887.
So were Nikolai Rogachev and Alexander Shtromberg, whose death sentences, passed at the Trial of the Fourteen, for their involvement in Narodnaya Volya, were not commuted.
Fine, clean bed linen; a sink for washing and plumbed water closets.35 The cell was small – seven paces long and five wide – and of the type common to Houses of Preliminary Detention and therefore, perhaps even more pleasant on account of the memory of the last days of ‘freedom’ – of course, relative freedom… The bunks were locked shut, and apart from a bench, there was nothing in the cell.
[9]The prisoners, including both women, were strip-searched on arrival, and then locked in solitary confinement in a small, sparsely furnished cell, where at first they had nothing to read, except a printed declaration on the wall warning that insulting the jailers would be punishable by death.
[12] On 7 January 1891, 28 year old Sofia Ginzburg, who had tried to revive Narodnaya Volya with the intention of assassinating the Tsar, was sent to Shlisselburg after her death sentence had been commuted to life imprisonment.
[13] The last political prisoner to be sent to Shlisselburg was Pyotr Karpovich, who shot and killed the Minister of National Enlightenment, Nikolay Bogolepov in 1901.
In 1928, the fortress was turned into a branch of the Museum of the October Revolution, but in 1939, shortly before the war, it was closed and the exhibits were moved to Leningrad.
[15] Shortly before Shlisselburg was occupied by the German troops (8 September 1941), a garrison of 350 Red Army soldiers was sent to the fortress on Orekhovets island to bring supplies and munition to the frontline.
The garrison held the abandoned castle for 500 days preventing the Germans from landing there and cutting the last transit route from Leningrad to the mainland.
An archaeological site was established in the fortress during 1968-1975 that excavated what remained from the ancient Novgorodian stone fort dated 1352 and other artifacts.
Tourists can reach the island from May to October via Shlisselburg[17] or from the Northern bank of Neva, via Petrokrepost' railway station with regular ferries that run every 10–15 minutes.
