Kaliningrad

Discovering East Prussian legacy in Kaliningrad

With wide avenues lined with propaganda posters, plenty of military uniforms in sight and its Stalinist-era name, Kaliningrad at first comes across as unmistakably Russian, or rather – Soviet. But its Gothic cathedral, cobbled streets and remains of Jugendstil architecture lurking behind communist-period concrete slabs tell a different story.

One of the newer political oddities on the map of Europe, Kaliningrad emerged as a little chunk of Russia inside the EU as a result of the Soviet victory in WWII and the collapse of the USSR 45 years later. For many centuries before that, it was the German province of East Prussia, colonised in the 12th century by Teutonic Knights; they built the city they named Königsberg (King’s Rock), after Bohemian King Ottokar II who sponsored the conquest. The indigenous Baltic inhabitants – the Old Prussians – were Germanised over centuries, leaving few traces apart from the region’s now obsolete name. It was renamed after one of Stalin’s henchmen, Mikhail Kalinin, in 1946.