Tourism in Russia > Sortavala

Sortavala

In the first years of the reign of Catherine the Great, mining studies were started, in the course of which considerable reserves of granites, marble and other rocks were found in the Olonets region.

At that time, Samuel Alopaeus, a preacher of the Evangelical Lutheran church, lived in Serdobol (now Sortavala). It was he who, through the Imperial Academy of Sciences, achieved that here, on Mount Belaya, the first test rock excavation quarry started to operate in 1765. In the first half of a century Ruskeala marble was used in the design of the famous cathedrals of the capital of the empire - Kazan, St. Isaac's; in the decoration of the interiors of the Mikhailovsky (Engineers') Castle, the Winter and Marble Palaces and many other famous buildings and monuments of St. Petersburg.