Stara Nekrasovka Village and the Meridian Monument

This village is named after a chief ("ataman") of the Don Cossacks: Nekrasov ("the ugly one"), when a group of Don Cossacks (known as Nekrasov Cossacks by the Turks) settled in the area. The Korchma hotel and restaurant, with its flamboyant "Bessarabian" cuisine, is situated in the village. 

It is situated in the Danube floodplain beside the beautiful Lake Lung nature reserve (a part of the larger Lake Katlabugh) which holds important populations of waterfowl. The village is close to the Isles of Izmail Regional Landscape Park.

Perhaps the most unexpected feature of the village is its Meridian Monument for the Struve Geodetic Arc. This simple post commemorates the end-point of a chain of triangulation points stretching more or less down the 26° E line of longitude from near Hammerfest in northern Norway over 2,820 km south to here at the Danube. This survey was carried out between 1816 and 1855 under the guidance of Friedrich George Wilhelm Struve, a German-born astronomer, who wanted to determine the exact shape and size of the Earth. The scheme included 258 main triangles and over 60 subsidiary station points. The measurements proved highly accurate and the results were used for many scientific purposes. In Finland, the Struve Geodetic Arc connected the triangulations of the northern and southern parts of the country up until the 1960s. When it was originally measured, the chain went through the territory of only two countries, Russia and Sweden. In today's geography, the Arc passes through ten countries: Norway, Sweden, Finland, Russia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus, Moldova and Ukraine. These countries have co-operated since 1994 for the recovery, verification and monumentation of the Arc. In July 2005, UNESCO approved inclusion of the Struve Geodetic Arc in the World Heritage List.

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