Korela

Korela guarded an island position in the Vuoksi river country near Lake Ladoga. The fortress belonged to the contested northern frontier between Russian and Swedish power. Sweden captured it in 1580 and substantially rebuilt its damaged defences. In 1582–1585 a round stone tower rose in the western part of the old fortress, with the German fortification specialist Jakob van Stendel involved in the work.

The tower had two levels with gun chambers and protected the old fortress's sole entrance. Its massive masonry reflects a defensive landscape adapted to artillery. In 1710, during the Great Northern War, Russian forces captured the stronghold. Its later use also shows another function of imperial fortifications: imprisonment. From 1775 members of Yemelyan Pugachev's family were held at Kexholm, including his wives and children; the women were confined in the Round Tower. Korela's surviving buildings therefore connect frontier warfare and rebuilding with the coercive institutions of the eighteenth-century Russian state.