Voronya Mountain

Categories / City Topography/Geographical Objects/Hills and Heights
VORONYA MOUNTAIN, a peak to the south of St. Petersburg in the vicinity of Krasnoe Selo village, one of the highest points of the Duderhof Heights (147 meters above the sea level); it overlooks the surroundings with the elevation of approximately 100 meters above the Duderhof Lake water surface level with a 79.9 meter mark. Voronya Mountain emerged as a result of glacial activity of the last (late pleistocene) glaciation from the morainic material which was deposited during one of the glacier's halts. According to some scholars it was additionally shifted by the ice which gives grounds for considering Voronya Mountain as terminal moraine. By sunny weather the view from the top of Voronya Mountain provides a panorama within a radius of up to 30-40 km with St. Petersburg clearly distinguished. At the onset of the Great Patriotic War 1941-45, there was stationed the "A" battery fitted out with the gunnery from the Aurora cruiser (a memorial was erected in 1974 in tribute of sailors and artillerists). In September 1941, after fierce fighting the German army occupied Voronya Mountain turning it into a fortified strongpoint. The German spotters used Voronya Mountain for monitoring the bombardments of Leningrad. It was also the location site of the German guns of various calibres shelling the city and the operating sites of the Soviet Army. During the Krasnoselsko-Ropshinsky operation of 1944 the Soviet army seized Voronya Mountain thus facilitating the defeat of the hostile Peterhof-Riflemen unit. Presently the slopes of Voronya Mountain are inhabited, the surviving forest have regrowing hazel brushwoods.

Y. P. Seliverstov. Воронья гора