Arkhangelsk Oblast

Mainland Arkhangelsk Oblast can be divided into 3 parts from north to south:

• Northern part - the White Sea coast and Northern Dvina's delta. Home to biggest cities (Arkhangelsk and Severodvinsk), but less populated in rural areas outside the delta.
• Middle part - the less populated part, with worst roads, a gap between North and South. Plesetsk Cosmodrome is located there.
• Southern part - agricultural and more populated part with an array of old towns, as Kargopol, Velsk, Solvychegodsk, and Kotlas.

Also the Franz Josef Land far north in the Arctic Sea and Novaya Zemlya, halfway there, are part of the Oblast.

• 🌍 Arkhangelsk — the region's capital, chief sea port of medieval Russia, which houses Europe's largest museum of wooden architecture (Malye Korely). Claims to be the cultural capital of Russian North.
• 🌍 Belushya Guba – the administrative center of Novaya Zemlya
• 🌍 Severodvinsk — the second-largest city in the Oblast, 35 km from Arkhangelsk, at the White Sea coast. Home to the military Russian Northern Fleet and a principal submarine base and construction site.
• 🌍 Kargopol — a 1000-year-old town in the south-west of the region, near Kenozersky National Park, notorious for sasquatch/bigfoot sightings
• 🌍 Kholmogory — Lomonosov's birthplace, a historic village with a museum and few abandoned churches.
• 🌍 Kotlas — an important rail junction in the region's southeast, transit point to Veliky Ustyug.
• 🌍 Mirny — a military town, forbidden for tourists, home to the Plesetsk Cosmodrome.
• 🌍 Onega — a small, old port and a base for tours heading out to Kiy Island.
• 🌍 Solvychegodsk — a historic town on the Vychegda River with an impressive Blagoveshchensky Cathedral and Vvedensky Monastery
• 🌍 Mezen —a small subpolar town in the northern part of the Oblast.

• 🌍 Solovetsky Islands — home to a hauntingly beautiful monastery which has served as a Russian fortress in numerous wars for the past 500 years as well as one of the first Soviet gulags; a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
• 🌍 Kenozersky National Park — at the border with Karelia, near Kargopol.
• 🌍 Vodlozero National Park — also at the border with Karelia, but more remote from roads.
• 🌍 Pinega — a beautiful river, a small town, and the only Oblast's national reserve, famous for its caves. Golubinsky Proval — the biggest cave at Pinega, open for tourists, best to visit in winter.
• Kiy Island — an uninhabited island in the White Sea that is a popular tourist destination for its disbanded Kiysky Monastery
• 🌍 Permogorye (also Bolshaya) — a Northern Dvina's riverside village on the road from Arkhangelsk to Kotlas, famous for a beautiful wooden church and local handicraft.
• 🌍 Franz Josef Land — is an archipelago in the Arctic far north. There are only a few marks of civilization in the whole archipelago, and most of the islands are covered by ice and snow.
• 🌍 Krasnaya Gorka ("Red Hill") — the highest point of Arkhangelsk oblast near Pinega with beautiful Krasnogorskiy Bogoroditskiy monastery ruins. The only alpine skiing place in the Oblast.
• 🌍 Novaya Zemlya — is a group of islands were a couple thousand people live; it is a mountainous island group with a history of nuclear testing.
• Narrow-gauge railroads — lost in taiga, they are partly abandoned, and partly operated by timber producers. Often constructed by prisoners, started to operate in Stalin's Gulag times. Going deeper into taiga, it's possible to find abandoned gulag locations and even small unpopulated towns.
• 🌍 Yemetsk — village with a beautiful lakefront Antonievo-Siysky monastery nearby

Locally called Pomorye, Arkhangelsk Oblast is a very large region (about the same size as France) in the Russian north. Sparsely populated (1.5 million for all this area), it is filled with taiga, beautiful lakes, wide rivers, and vast swamps. The nature is kin to Finland, especially its subpolar part. Most famous destinations are Arkhangelsk (regional capital) and the Solovetsky Islands, where a beautiful northern monastery/citadel served as a brutal gulag prison during the Soviet years. There are other less-visited, but very picturesque towns in the Oblast (Kargopol, Solvychegodsk), but the main reason to visit the region is to discover its severe beautiful nature mixed with wooden rural architecture. There are 2 national parks and 1 natural reserve, which are truly worth to be seen in Arkhangelsk Oblast'.

Russian is spoken everywhere. Outside of Arkhangelsk city center it's hard to find English-speakers. See the Russian phrasebook.

• 🌍 Malye Karely. Large and locally famous wooden architecture museum, 24 km from Arkhangelsk. (updated Sep 2018)

• - hiking
• - skidoo rides (in winter)
• - alpine and plain skiing (in winter)
• - fishing

• Kulebyaka - a local pie with fish.
• Kozuly - local sweets.

Northern Russians are kind and hospitable, but a foreign tourist looking significantly richer than locals can provoke someone for a robbery.

Use general safety precautions and keep low profile while surfing the region with no Russian guide. Avoid wooden part of Arkhangelsk at the left bank of Northern Dvina and keep out of unattended dark places in cities at night.

Arkhangelsk is the main transit point for those who go to Nenetsia (regular flights to Naryan-Mar and Amderma).

Travelers heading to Komi Republic and Salekhard by rail are passing through Kotlas.

In the late summer, it may be possible to get on a ship heading east along the north coast of Russia towards Nenetsia and Yamalia.