Neva

Neva
Origin	Lake Ladoga
Mouth	Gulf of Finland
Basin Countries	Russia
Length	74 km (46 mi)
Source Elevation	4 m (13 ft)
Avg. Discharge	2,600 m³/s (91,832 ft³/s)
Watershed Area	282,000 km² (108,880 mi²)

The River Neva (Нева´) is a 74 km long Russian river flowing from Lake Ladoga (Ладожское Озеро - Ladozhskoye Ozero) through the Karelian Isthmus (Карельский Перешеек - Karelskii Peresheyek) and the city of Saint Petersburg (Санкт - Петербург - Sankt Peterburg) to the Gulf of Finland (Финский Залив - Finskii Zaliv). In the mouth of the river a flood-protection barrier is currently build to avoid flooding of St. Petersburg due to storm-surges in the Gulf of Finland.

In the Middle Ages the wide and navigable river had a great importance as a link between the Baltics and the Volga portages leading to the Orient. It was a site of the famous Battle of the Neva (1240).

During the 16th century the mouth of the Neva River was the site of the Swedish fortress Nyen, and the inlet to the Ladoga - of the Russian fortress Oreshek, later renamed Shlisselburg. The former was replaced with the Peter and Paul Fortress (Петропавловская Крепость - Petropavlovskaya Krepost') in 1703. Standing on the Hare Island (Зайчий Остров - Zaichii Ostrov), the fortress is considered the first structure of present-day St Petersburg.

The Russian Grigori Rasputin was killed when he drowned in this River in 1916.

Neva was the name of a 200-foot-long (61-meter), three-masted Sloop-of-war, the first Russian ship to circumnavigate the globe in 1804 under the command of Lieutenant commander Urey Fedorovich Lisianski. The Russian female poet, Akhmatova, included the Neva in many of her poems written in the early 20th century.