Lake Ladoga Lake Ladoga Lake Ladoga ( or ; [earlier in Finnish "Nevajärvi"]; ; ) is a freshwater lake located in the Republic of Karelia and Leningrad Oblast in northwestern Russia, in the vicinity of Saint Petersburg. It is the largest lake entirely in Europe, and the 14th largest freshwater lake by area in the world. "Ladoga Lacus", a methane lake on Saturn's moon Titan, is named after the lake. In one of Nestor's chronicles from the 12th century he mentions a lake called "the Great Nevo", a clear link to the Neva River and, possibly furthermore, to Finnish "nevo" "sea" or
Lake Ladoga In his opinion, the primary name of the lake was "old source", associated to the open sea, in contrast to the name of the Neva River (flowing from Lake Ladoga) which would derive from the German expression for "the new". Through the intermediate form "*Aldaugja", cam about, referring to "Ladoga (city)". The lake has an average surface area of 17,891 km (excluding the islands). Its north-to-south length is 219 km and its average width is 83 km; the average depth is 51 m, although it reaches a maximum of 230 m in the north-western part. Basin area: 276,000 km, volume: