The town of Luga stands on the Luga River, 139 km to the south of St. Petersburg.

It is a failroad station on the Saint Petersburg – Pskov line.

It has the area of 14 sq. km and the population of 37.332 people (as of 2013).

It was first recorded in the 15th century in a small village scribe book as Luskoye Village in the Novgorod land.

The town was named after the river, and the river name is associated with the Estonian “laugas”, i.e. “swamp”.

During the Great Patriotic War of 1941-45 Luga was a site of fierce battles on the outskirts of Leningrad.

In the vicinity of Luga there is a former estate Domkino, which belonged to the Russian astronomer S.P. Glazenap. In the former Kalganovka estate there lived artists I.N. Kramskoy, I.I. Shishkin, and K.A. Savitski. In the Spitsyn village on Lake Nalai there lived and worked the famous composer N.A. Rimsky-Korsakov. Luga was repeatedly visited by Alexander Pushkin on his way from St. Petersburg to the Mikhailovsky Village.