Arkhangelsk City Hall Live Cam

Lenin Square is the paved centre of Arkhangelsk, on the Northern Dvina not far from where it reaches the White Sea. The camera looks across it from the city administration building.

This was Russia's first seaport. Founded in 1584, it handled the whole of the country's seaborne trade until St Petersburg was built, and it lived on timber afterwards: sawmills along the delta shipped wood across northern Europe.

The first Arctic convoy of the second world war unloaded here in August 1941, and the route to Arkhangelsk and Murmansk carried supplies for the four years that followed. The river freezes for about half the year and is kept open by icebreakers.