Onega Bay Onega Bay The Onega Bay () is located in the Republic of Karelia and Arkhangelsk Oblast in Northwestern Russia, west of the city of Arkhangelsk. It is the southernmost of four large bays and gulfs of the White Sea, the others being the Dvina Bay, the Mezen Bay, and the Kandalaksha Gulf. The area of the bay is . The Onega Bay is long and - wide. The average depth of the bay is , and the maximum depth is . The bay freezes in winter. Onega, Kem, and Vyg Rivers flow into the bay. The bay has numerous islands.
Lake Onega of the 15th–20th centuries. The complex includes a UNESCO World Heritage site, Kizhi Pogost. Eastern shores of the lake contain about 1,200 petroglyphs (rock engravings) dated to the 4th–2nd millennia BC. The major cities on the lake are Petrozavodsk, Kondopoga and Medvezhyegorsk. The lake is of glacial-tectonic origin and is a small remnant of a larger body of water which existed in this area during an Ice Age. In geologic terms, the lake is rather young, formed – like almost all lakes in northern Europe – through the carving activity of the inland ice sheets in the latter part of