Vorkuta

Vorkuta lies 150 kilometres north of the Arctic Circle — the fourth most populous city beyond it and 'the easternmost city of Europe'. Coal was found by the geologist Georgy Chernov in 1930; the city grew with the mines of the Pechora coal basin, and the first train from the 'mainland' arrived in December 1941. The city is a museum of Arctic urbanism: the classical central ensemble of the Leningrad school (the House of Political Education, the Rodina cinema, the Miners' Palace of Culture) was built in the tundra by those who came to develop the North. The city's history is inseparable from the camp past of the region and the 1953 Rechlag uprising — heavy pages remembered here. The title 'City of Labour Valour' was granted in 2021. Today Vorkuta leads the country in population decline (a peak of 117 thousand in 1991), the Rudnik settlement is fully abandoned — and that is exactly why the city is so interesting: a living Arctic in a confessional state. Around it are nature monuments: the Khalmeryu waterfall, one of the largest in European Russia, Mount Pemboy, and further afield the Marble Canyon of the Kara river. The polar night lasts 11 days, the polar day 46.