The fortress at Shlisselburg is built on an island in the river, at the very spot where the Neva leaves Lake Ladoga, and whoever held it held the water road between the Baltic and the heart of Russia. The Novgorodians built the first wooden walls in 1323, and called the place Oreshek, which means little nut, after the island's shape. Over the next four centuries it passed between Russians and Swedes, until in 1702 Peter the Great stormed it on his way to the sea, and renamed it Schlusselburg, the key fortress, a key that would unlock the Baltic. Within a year he had founded Saint Petersburg downstream.
Later the fortress became a prison, and a grim one, reserved for political prisoners. Revolutionaries, rebels and, in 1887, a young man called Alexander Ulyanov, who was hanged here for plotting to kill the tsar, passed through its walls. He was Lenin's older brother. The red brick towers and thick walls are still standing, with a museum and the ruins of the prison, and the island is reached by a small ferry from the town.
The label ties Schlisselburg with Old Ladoga and New Ladoga, and the three places form a group on a tentative heritage list around the southern shore of Lake Ladoga. Old Ladoga, up the Volkhov river, is one of the oldest settlements in Russia, associated in the chronicles with the arrival of Rurik, the half-legendary Viking founder of the Russian line, in the 860s, and has a stone fortress and a twelfth-century church with medieval frescoes. New Ladoga, at the mouth of the Volkhov, grew up around a canal that Peter built to bypass the stormy lake.
The town of Shlisselburg, with about twelve thousand people, has fuel and food. The road from Saint Petersburg runs east along the Neva, flat and straight, a ride of an hour, with frequent speed cameras. Lake Ladoga is the biggest in Europe, and its shore, with reeds, sandbars and pine forest, is wide and cold.
Best visited between May and September, when the ferry runs regularly. Summers are cool, with fog and sudden storms. Ask for smoked fish from the lake, such as vendace or bream, at a stall near the harbour.