Yakutsk (/jəˈkuːtsk/ yə-KOOTSK)[a] is the capital and largest city of Sakha, Russia, located about 450 km (280 mi) south of the Arctic Circle.

[11] As a result, Yakutsk is the coldest major city in the world (although a number of smaller towns in that region are slightly colder).

When they arrived they mixed with other indigenous Siberians [15] The Russian settlement of Yakutsk was founded in 1632 as an ostrog (fortress) by Pyotr Beketov.

The lowest temperatures ever recorded on Earth outside Antarctica and Greenland have occurred in the basin of the Yana River to the northeast of Yakutsk.

[citation needed] Yakutsk is an inland location, being almost 1,000 km (620 mi) from the Pacific Ocean, which coupled with the high latitude, means exposure to severe winters and lack of temperature moderation.

The climate is quite dry, with most of the annual precipitation occurring in the summer months, due to the intense Siberian High forming around the very cold continental air during the winter.

However, summer precipitation is not heavy since the moist southeasterly winds from the Pacific Ocean lose their moisture over the coastal mountains well before reaching the Lena Valley.

[24] Tourism as an economic sector plays a small but growing role, thanks to the city's unique cultural heritage and natural attractions such as the Lena Pillars Nature Park, a UNESCO World Heritage site, and the Permafrost Kingdom, which is a tourist complex dedicated to showcasing the unique features of the region's permafrost.

The traditional Yakut summer solstice festivities include a celebration of the revival and renewal of the nature, fertility and beginning of a new year.

The city has an increasingly vibrant film industry that has been gaining international recognition over recent years for its unique style and the way its filmmakers portray the region and its people.

[32] People in Yakutsk wear very fluffy and fuzzy clothing, and in extremely cold weather they cope by sheltering indoors in warm housing, which is believed to lower Yakutsk's increase in winter mortality rates compared to the seasonal rise in mortality seen in milder regions of the world.

[9] In the 2021 Census, the following ethnic groups were listed:[34] Orthodox Christianity is the most widely professed faith in Yakutsk, with significant populations of the adherents of Shamanism and Rodnovery.

In the dead of winter, the frozen Lena River makes for a passable highway for ice truckers using its channel to deliver provisions to far-flung outposts.

The highway ends on the eastern bank of Lena in Nizhny Bestyakh (Нижний Бестях), an urban-type settlement of some four thousand people.

There is also a branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, which contains, among other things, the Institute of Cosmophysical Research, which runs the Yakutsk Extensive Air Shower installation (one of the largest cosmic-ray detector arrays in the world), and the Melnikov Permafrost Institute, founded in 1960 with the aim of solving the serious and costly problems associated with construction of buildings on frozen soil.