Kingisepp

Kingisepp ( _ru. Ки́нгисепп or _ru. Кингисе́пп), formerly Yamburg ( _ru. Я́мбург) and Jama ( _ru. Я́ма), is a town in Leningrad Oblast, Russia. It lies along the Luga River, 137 km west of St. Petersburg, 20 km east of Narva, and 49 km south of the Gulf of Finland. Its population as of the 2002 Census was 50,295.

The town was first documented in 1384, when the Novgorodians built there a fortress against the Swedes. They called it Yama or Yamsky Gorodok after a Finnic tribe which lived in the area. The environs of the town are still cited as the main location of speakers of the nearly extinct Ingrian language [http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=izh] . The citadel withstood sieges by the Teutonic Knights in 1395 and from 1444 to 1448. At the end of the Livonian War, it was ceded to Sweden, only to be returned twelve years later, in 1595. Following the Treaty of Stolbovo, it again passed to the Swedes, who kept the name which in Swedish orthography became "Jama" or "Jamo". The township was completely destroyed by Russian armies during the war of 1656–8, after which only the citadel remained intact. It is questionable whether the township, with its exclusively Russian townspeople, ever recovered.

In 1703, the citadel was finally taken by the Russians in the course of the Great Northern War (it was first held by the Russians for a month in late 1700) and renamed Jamburg (a German version of the name). Five years later, Peter the Great granted the town to Alexander Menshikov in his capacity of the Duke of Izhora. The German form of its name, however, was retained until 1922, when the Bolsheviks renamed it after the Estonian Communist leader Viktor Kingissepp. It should not be confused with the Estonian town of Kuressaare, formerly "Kingissepa".

Sister cities

* Narvik, Norway.
* Sassnitz, Germany.
* Rauma, Finland.

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