The story
Kizhi Regatta in Kizhi/Petrozavodsk
The Kizhi Regatta is an annual traditional boatbuilding and rowing festival held on Kizhi Island in Lake Onega, Karelia, home to the Kizhi open-air museum of wooden architecture. Now in its twenty-eighth edition, the two-day event pairs a handmade wooden boat competition with rowing races around the island.
Kizhi Island sits in Lake Onega in the Republic of Karelia and holds one of Russia's most significant open-air museums, the Kizhi Pogost, a UNESCO World Heritage Site built almost entirely of wood, including the extraordinary twenty-two-domed Transfiguration Church, constructed, according to local tradition, without a single iron nail.