Utti Fortress is a

bastion A bastion is a structure projecting outward from the curtain wall of a fortification, most commonly angular in shape and positioned at the corners of the fort. The fully developed bastion consists of two faces and two flanks, with fire from the ...

fortress in

Utti Utti is a village in Valkeala, since 2009 a part of Kouvola, Finland. In 1918 General Carl Gustaf Mannerheim set up the first Finnish Air Force base in the village. Today, Utti is best known for the Utti Jaeger Regiment, a helicopter base and ...

Finland Finland, officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It borders Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of Bothnia to the west and the Gulf of Finland to the south, ...

. It was built in 1790s as a part of a larger

South-Eastern Finland fortification system South-Eastern Finland fortification system is an extensive defensive system formed by three concentric fortress chains in South-East Finland built by Russia in the 1790s. The purpose of the fortification system was to protect the capital of ...

to protect

Saint Petersburg Saint Petersburg, formerly known as Petrograd and later Leningrad, is the List of cities and towns in Russia by population, second-largest city in Russia after Moscow. It is situated on the Neva, River Neva, at the head of the Gulf of Finland ...

, the capital of

Russian Empire The Russian Empire was an empire that spanned most of northern Eurasia from its establishment in November 1721 until the proclamation of the Russian Republic in September 1917. At its height in the late 19th century, it covered about , roughl ...

. The fortress was built around the area of the Battle of Utti that was fought during the Russo-Swedish War in 1789. During the battle, Russians had noted that the narrow passage between the Haukkajärvi lake and the Haukkasuo bog was suitable for a fortress, as it was difficult to bypass. Construction process started in 1791 and finished in 1792. Around 1100 men took part in the construction, some being from the military and some from the countryside nearby. Within the fortress were barracks, officers quarters, stables,

guardhouse A guardhouse (also known as a watch house, guard building, guard booth, guard shack, security booth, security building, or sentry building) is a building used to house Security guard, personnel and security equipment. Guardhouses have histori ...

and

gunpowder magazine A gunpowder magazine is a magazine (building) designed to store the explosive gunpowder in wooden barrels for safety. Gunpowder, until superseded, was a universal explosive used in the military and for civil engineering: both applications re ...

. It could house up to 400 soldiers. The fortress was armed at the beginning with 14 cannons and 2

howitzer The howitzer () is an artillery weapon that falls between a cannon (or field gun) and a mortar. It is capable of both low angle fire like a field gun and high angle fire like a mortar, given the distinction between low and high angle fire break ...

s, but later it had up to 24 cannons. There were plans of expanding the fortress, so that the old fortress would have been encircled by the newer one. The plans were never put in motion, as after the

Finnish War The Finnish War (; ; ) was fought between the Gustavian era, Kingdom of Sweden and the Russian Empire from 21 February 1808 to 17 September 1809 as part of the Napoleonic Wars. As a result of the war, the eastern third of Sweden was established a ...

the border was moved to the

Gulf of Bothnia The Gulf of Bothnia (; ; ) is divided into the Bothnian Bay and the Bothnian Sea, and it is the northernmost arm of the Baltic Sea, between Finland's west coast ( East Bothnia) and the northern part of Sweden's east coast ( West Bothnia an ...

and the fortress system lost its importance. Fortress was never fully completed and it was ultimately shut down in 1809.

References

Forts in Finland {{Russia-mil-stub