History of Vyborg

On the granite islands off the northwestern coast of the Gulf of Finland, where the ancient trade routes to Lake Ladoga and the Neva met the Baltic, Karelian settlements stood long before any town appeared here. Archaeologists have found traces of a lived-in countryside dating well before the end of the 13th century. It was to this spot, to the rocky Castle Island, that the Swedes came at the end of the 13th century, and the entire subsequent chronicle of the town begins with the fortress they built.

A Swedish fortress on the border

In 1293, during the Third Swedish Crusade, the regent Torgils Knutsson founded a powerful citadel here. The name “Vyborg” was formed from the Old Norse roots *vi* (“holy”) and *borg* (“fortress”). In letters of King Birger Magnusson dated to the mid-1290s, the castle is mentioned as raised in the name of God and the Blessed Virgin, which confirms the reading of the name as “Holy Fortress.”

In 1323, after the conclusion of the Treaty of Nöteborg between Sweden and Novgorod, the Karelian Isthmus together with Vyborg passed definitively to the Swedish Crown. The castle became the key stronghold of the eastern frontier: justice was dispensed here, taxes were collected, and the fisheries were controlled.

Vyborg received the status of a town in 1403, when King Eric of Pomerania granted the settlement the right of self-government, its own town hall, and regular markets on the model of Uppsala. From a garrison outpost, Vyborg turned into a fully fledged trading center.

The town’s heyday came in the 15th century. Under the governor Karl Knutsson Bonde (1442–1448), the castle was significantly expanded and embellished, and in the 1470s, through the efforts of Erik Axelsson Tott, a stone wall with nine towers was raised around the settlement. It was then that the outlines of the Old Town were formed — outlines still discernible today in the curves of Krepostnaya Street and the stern masonry of the surviving towers.

Sieges, the “thunder,” and the great fire

The long struggle for the Karelian Isthmus brought Russian armies to the walls of Vyborg more than once. In 1495, during the siege by the army of Ivan III, an event took place that entered history as the “Vyborg Thunder.” A powerful explosion in one of the towers, according to legend, put the besiegers to flight. Popular tradition ascribed this miracle to divine intervention, but the reality was more prosaic: the fortress held, and the Russians withdrew.

In 1547–1550 the appearance of the town changed: the Round Tower rose on the Market Square, followed by the Town Hall Tower and other bastions of the “new” defensive belt. The 16th and 17th centuries were turbulent for Vyborg: the town was shaken by wars on the Baltic, by epidemics, and by bloody political feuds such as the “Vyborg Bloodbath” of 1599.

In 1652 the town lived through a devastating fire that destroyed most of its buildings. Yet this disaster gave an impetus to development: the engineer Anders Torstensson drew up a new master plan that straightened the streets and defined Vyborg’s architectural appearance for two centuries to come.

Peter I and the Russian period

The Great Northern War brought Peter’s regiments to the walls of Vyborg. The first assault, in 1706, proved unsuccessful due to a shortage of supplies and artillery. In the spring of 1710, however, the town was besieged again: this time the offensive was conducted by all the rules — the infantry blockaded the town from the land, and the galley fleet from the sea. On 13 June 1710, Vyborg capitulated. For Peter I this meant the “final securing” of St. Petersburg: the Swedish fortress that had threatened the young capital ceased to exist.

Vyborg was officially incorporated into the Russian Empire by the Treaty of Nystad in 1721. In 1744, by decree of Empress Elizabeth Petrovna, the Vyborg Governorate was established. The region’s special administrative status made it possible to preserve Swedish law and the Lutheran Church here. In the same period, work began on Tverdysh Island on the Annen Fortifications — earthen bastions named in honor of Empress Anna Ioannovna. Decades later, in the course of the Russo-Swedish War of 1788–1790, these waters became the stage of a major naval battle: the squadron of Admiral Vasily Chichagov utterly defeated the Swedish fleet as it tried to break out of Vyborg Bay.

The Finnish 19th century

After the Treaty of Fredrikshamn of 1809, by which all of Finland passed to Russia, the Vyborg Governorate was transferred in 1811 to the newly formed Grand Duchy of Finland. Legally the town remained under Russian sovereignty, but its administration, taxation, and schools were run under Finnish law. This special status proved beneficial. The most important milestone was the opening of the Saimaa Canal in 1856: by connecting the lake system of Eastern Finland with the Baltic through the port of Vyborg, it turned the town into the region’s chief maritime gateway. Within a few decades Vyborg’s population tripled.

The general plan of 1861 brought order to the building beyond the medieval ramparts. By the end of the century, gas lighting, running water, the telephone, and electricity had appeared, and in 1912 a tram line was put into service. In the summer of 1906 Vyborg found itself at the center of nationwide politics: 180 deputies of the dissolved First State Duma gathered at the Belvedere Hotel to sign the “Vyborg Manifesto,” calling for civil disobedience. The choice of the town was no accident: Finnish autonomy protected the deputies from immediate arrest by the imperial police.

Viipuri: the Finnish interwar period

After Finland proclaimed its independence on 6 December 1917, the town remained part of it, taking the Finnish name Viipuri. In the spring of 1918 it became one of the last strongholds of the “Reds” during the Finnish Civil War. On 29 April, “White” units under the command of Mannerheim took the town, after which the “Vyborg Massacre” followed — a mass reprisal that claimed the lives of hundreds of civilians.

During the interwar two decades, Viipuri became the second-largest city in Finland. The architect Otto Meurman drew up a plan for the development of new neighborhoods, and in 1935 the famous city library by Alvar Aalto opened — a monument of European functionalism. By the end of the 1930s the city was home to about eighty thousand people; woolen, cellulose, and machine-building enterprises were in operation, and the busy port linked Viipuri with the Baltic and with Finland’s inland waterways.

Two wars and the Soviet era

The Soviet–Finnish War of 1939–1940 changed the fate of Vyborg forever. By early March 1940, units of the 7th Army under General Kirill Meretskov had broken through the defenses on the Karelian Isthmus and reached the town. Under the terms of the Moscow Peace Treaty signed on 12 March, Vyborg and the surrounding territories passed to the Soviet Union. Almost the entire Finnish population was evacuated into the interior of Finland, and the town itself became an administrative center within the Karelo-Finnish SSR.

In the summer of 1941, with the beginning of the “Continuation War,” Finnish forces regained control of the town. Its former inhabitants began to return to Viipuri — as Vyborg was once again called. Yet as early as 20 June 1944, during the Vyborg–Petrozavodsk offensive, Soviet troops definitively took the town, which in November of that year was incorporated into the Leningrad Oblast of the RSFSR.

The postwar decades entirely transformed the town’s appearance and way of life. Families from the northwestern regions of Russia resettled here; the port developed, and shipbuilding and instrument-making enterprises were opened. The historic buildings that had suffered during the war were partly restored and partly replaced with standard housing. Vyborg Castle with the Tower of St. Olaf became a museum, and Mon Repos Park — the former estate of the barons Nicolay — received the status of a state museum-reserve in 1988.

Vyborg today

In the 1990s and 2000s Vyborg once again gained the status of a tourist center: first as a transit point on the way to the Finnish border, and then as a destination in its own right. In 2010 the town received the honorary title of “City of Military Glory” and became the only historic settlement of federal significance in the Leningrad Oblast. From the mid-2010s, large-scale restoration works have been carried out here: Vyborg Castle, the Round and Clock Towers, the Alvar Aalto Library, and the rocky Mon Repos Park have all been transformed, with the restoration of the last completed in 2025.

Today Vyborg is home to around seventy thousand people. It is a town where seven centuries of history are tightly interwoven in a small space: the medieval lanes of the Old Town, Swedish, Russian, and Finnish architectural heritage, the pre-revolutionary port, and the Soviet-era outskirts. Vyborg remains a witness to centuries of interaction between Scandinavia, Russia, and all of Northern Europe.