The most recognisable landmark in Murmansk is Alyosha — formally, "To the Defenders of the Soviet Arctic during the Great Patriotic War" — a colossal concrete soldier in a long greatcoat staring out over Kola Bay from a hill on the northern edge of the city. Erected in 1974, the statue commemorates the Soviet soldiers and sailors who held the Murmansk front against the Wehrmacht through forty-three months of brutal fighting.
The walk up to the monument is exposed and cold most of the year, but the view is the best in Murmansk: the bay, the docks, the snow-streaked hills, and on a clear evening the lights of the city laid out below. An eternal flame and a curved wall listing the names of fallen units sit at the base.