The Siege of Leningrad: The Road of Life, 1941–44

The siege begins here. On 8 September 1941 German troops took Shlisselburg on the shore of Lake Ladoga, and the last land routes into Leningrad were cut. Offshore, on a small island, a garrison of 350 Red Army soldiers held the abandoned fortress for 500 days. Heavy German fire wrecked everything inside, yet the Germans never landed, and the city kept a foothold on the water. The fortress is now a museum.

Visitor guidance: The island lies in the Neva off Shlisselburg; the fortress is a museum.

Once the lake froze, Ladoga became the city's lifeline. The first supplies crossed the ice on 19 November 1941 by horse-drawn sleigh; a column of 60 trucks followed on the night of 22 November. On 23 December, for the first time, it delivered more than the city ate in a day: 786 tonnes. Over the winter it carried 356,000 tons of supplies. Near Kokkorevo, on the shore, stands the Broken Ring memorial.

Visitor guidance: The memorial stands on the Ladoga shore near Kokkorevo, part of the Road of Life memorials.

Nikolai Vavilov founded this institute in 1921 to gather the world's largest collection of plant seeds. During the siege some 50 botanists protected about 120 tonnes of seeds, nuts and roots from fire bombs, cold, rodents and their own hunger. They would rather starve than eat the collection. At least 19 of them died, mostly from starvation. The institute is still a working seed bank.

Tanya Savicheva, a Leningrad schoolgirl, began a diary around 28 December 1941 with the death of her sister Zhenya. Her mother died on 13 May 1942. Her last pages read: "The Savichevs are dead." "Everyone is dead." "Only Tanya is left." Her sister Nina had been evacuated across the Ladoga ice. At the 3rd km of the Road of Life, the Flower of Life memorial has eight tablets, set up in 1975, that stand for pages of her diary.

Visitor guidance: The memorial is on the Road of Life at its 3rd kilometre.

On 9 August 1942 Karl Eliasberg conducted Shostakovich's Seventh Symphony in the Bolshoy Philharmonic Hall. Only 15 orchestra members were still available, so the others were searched out across the city, and players received extra rations. Loudspeakers carried the concert through the streets and toward the German lines. Beforehand the Soviet command ordered a bombardment, code-named "Squall", of 3,000 shells to keep German guns silent. The hall seats 1,500.

Visitor guidance: The Bolshoi Zal is one of the best-known music halls in Russia.

About 420,000 civilians and 50,000 soldiers lie here in 186 mass graves; each plot is marked only with the date of death. The memorial opened on 9 May 1960. A main path 480 metres long leads to the Motherland statue, and a granite wall behind it carries the words: "No one is forgotten, nothing is forgotten."

Visitor guidance: A solemn memorial: keep quiet and dress respectfully.

The siege ended on 27 January 1944, after the "900 days and nights" of the siege. The Monument to the Heroic Defenders of Leningrad, unveiled in 1975, honours the victims and the survivors. It has a 48-metre obelisk, a large circular enclosure and an underground Memorial Hall.

Visitor guidance: Metro Moskovskaya is the nearest station.