Vladivostok

Golden Horn Bay and the Golden Bridge

Zolotoj Rog

Centre, Golden Horn

A seven-kilometre natural harbour around which the city grew, named after the bay in Istanbul. Since 2012 its mouth has been spanned by the cable-stayed Golden Bridge, with two V-shaped towers, which is the symbol of Vladivostok. Pacific Fleet warships are moored in the bay and ferries to the islands pass beneath them.

Tip: The bridge is best photographed from below, from the Korabelnaya embankment by the Marine Terminal, and in the evening when it is lit up — the lights go off before midnight. You cannot walk across it; it has no pavements. Mind your camera: the fleet's ships in the bay are a military site, and anyone pointing a telephoto lens at them may end up talking to security. The bridge and the skyline behind it are fine.

Admission:

free

Time needed:

1 h

Eagle's Nest viewpoint and funicular

Orlinoje gnezdo

Centre

The highest hill in the centre, two hundred and fourteen metres above sea level, with a viewing platform above the Golden Horn and the bridge. A short funicular from 1962, one of the few in Russia, runs up its flank, covering a hundred and eighty metres of track in under two minutes. The viewpoint has a monument to Cyril and Methodius, the missionaries credited with the Slavic alphabet from which Cyrillic derives.

Tip: The funicular costs a few dozen roubles, paid in cash; its upper station is on Sukhanova Street, and from there it is another ten minutes on foot to the viewpoint via a footbridge over the motorway. Go at dusk, when the bridge and the city light up, and bring a jacket, as it is windy at the top even in summer. In June and July the whole bay is often under fog in the morning and the view is zero.

Admission:

viewpoint free, funicular around 30 ₽

Time needed:

1 h

S-56 submarine

Korabelnaya embankment

A Soviet Second World War submarine which in 1942–43 transferred from the Pacific via the Panama Canal and the Atlantic to the Northern Fleet, and sank several enemy ships during the war. It stands on a plinth on the embankment by the Eternal Flame and you can walk inside: the front half holds a small museum of the submarine fleet, while the rear half has been left as it was in service — torpedo tubes, cabins and the engine room.

Tip: The museum is small, half an hour is enough, and admission is nominal. Anyone taller than 1.80 m should expect narrow hatches between compartments. Right next to it are the Pacific Fleet memorial hall and the chapel of St Andrew; the whole area combines with the Arsenal and the Korabelnaya embankment into a two-hour walk.

Admission:

around 200 ₽

Time needed:

30–45 min

Vladivostok Fortress

Sports Harbour

At the turn of the twentieth century Vladivostok was one of the most heavily fortified naval strongholds in the world, with sixteen forts and dozens of batteries scattered across the peninsula and islands. In the centre, a museum occupies the former Bezymyannaya battery above Sports Harbour, with guns, casemates and an exhibition on the defence of the Far East. The forts themselves are spread around the suburbs and several are open to visitors.

Tip: The museum in the centre is a good one-hour introduction, but you will see the real fortress at Fort No. 7 in the north of the city — more than one and a half kilometres of tunnels inside the hill, reached by taxi and visited with a guide. It is around eight degrees inside all year, so bring an extra layer even in August.

Admission:

around 400 ₽

Time needed:

1–1.5 h

Railway station and the end of the Trans-Siberian

Centre, Aleutskaya Street

A 1912 station building in Neo-Russian style, built as a scaled-down copy of Moscow's Yaroslavsky station, where trains to Vladivostok depart. On the platform stands a post marked 9,288, the distance in kilometres from Moscow, and a steam locomotive as a monument. A footbridge leads from the station straight to the Marine Terminal, where ships depart.

Tip: The finest part is the interior of the main hall with its ceiling paintings, which you can enter without a ticket via the security scanner. The 9,288 post is on the platform by track one, reached by the footbridge from the hall. If you arrive on the Trans-Siberian, the station left-luggage office saves you dragging a suitcase to the hotel if check-in is not until the afternoon.

Admission:

free

Time needed:

30 min

Tokarevsky Lighthouse

Egersheld

One of the oldest lighthouses in the Russian Far East, dating from 1876, standing at the end of a narrow sand spit on the southern tip of the Egersheld peninsula. The white tower with its red lantern is the most photographed spot in the city, with views of the Russky Bridge and the entrance to the Eastern Bosphorus strait, through which ships sail into port.

Tip: The spit to the lighthouse is partly flooded at high tide and in waves, so check the tide in an app or expect wet shoes. Go at sunset, when the sun goes down behind the Russky Bridge. In spring, in April and May, spotted seals bask on the rocks around the spit — don't feed them or go closer than a few metres. Take a bus to the Egersheld terminus, then walk ten minutes.

Admission:

free

Time needed:

1–1.5 h

Russky Bridge and Russky Island

Russky Island

The Russky Bridge linking the city with Russky Island, pictured on the 2,000-rouble banknote, had the longest cable-stayed span in the world when it opened in 2012, at 1,104 metres. Beyond it lies an island with the Far Eastern Federal University campus built for the APEC summit, coastal cliffs, coves and the Voroshilov Battery — a coastal fortress battery with twelve-inch guns in rotating turrets, now a museum.

Tip: The university campus is open to the public and its waterfront overlooking the Ussuri Bay is the quietest walk around; bus 15 runs here from the centre. The Voroshilov Battery is twenty minutes by taxi from the campus and admission includes a tour of the underground spaces beneath the turrets. The island's finest cliffs, at Cape Tobizin, are reached on a dirt road that ordinary taxis won't take — you need an off-road vehicle or an organised trip.

Admission:

bridge free, Voroshilov Battery around 400 ₽

Time needed:

half a day

Primorsky Oceanarium

Russky Island

A large marine aquarium on Russky Island, opened in 2016, with a tunnel beneath a tank, an exhibition on the evolution of life in the ocean and a dolphinarium. The shell-shaped building stands right on the shore of Ajax Bay next to the university campus. It focuses mainly on the fauna of the Sea of Japan and the North Pacific — crabs, octopus, jellyfish and the fish you will later see at the market.

Tip: Tickets for the dolphinarium shows are sold separately and sell out at weekends, so buy them at the ticket desk first thing in the morning. It is quietest on weekday mornings. The oceanarium combines well with a walk around the university campus next door — bus 15 from the centre takes about thirty minutes, a taxi is quicker.

Admission:

around 1,500 ₽

Time needed:

2–3 h

Svetlanskaya Street and the Arsenyev Museum

Centre, Svetlanskaya

The main street of old Vladivostok, lined with department stores and banks from before the revolution, when Germans, Chinese, Koreans and Americans did business here. At number 20 is the Arsenyev Museum, the oldest museum in Primorye, named after the explorer Vladimir Arsenyev, whose book Dersu Uzala was filmed by Akira Kurosawa. The exhibition covers the indigenous peoples, tigers and the gold rush in the Far East.

Tip: Near the museum, at Svetlanskaya 33, is the GUM department store, formerly Kunst & Albers, once the most modern shop in the Far East — the courtyard behind it with brick warehouses is now full of cafés. In the Arsenyev Museum the room on the Amur tiger and leopard is worth seeing — around seven hundred tigers and about a hundred and twenty leopards live in the Russian Far East. Labels are mostly in Russian only.

Admission:

museum around 400 ₽

Time needed:

1.5–2 h