Baltic Sea

The Baltic Sea is located in Northern Europe, bounded by the Scandinavian Peninsula, the mainlands of Northern Europe, Eastern Europe, Central Europe, and the Danish islands. It drains into the Kattegat by way of the Öresund, the Great Belt and the Little Belt. Kattegat then continues in the Skagerrak into the North Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. The Baltic Sea is linked to the White Sea by the White Sea Canal and directly to the North Sea by the Kiel Canal.

Cities

The biggest coastal cities:

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• Saint Petersburg (Russia) 4,700,000
• Stockholm (Sweden) 743,703 (metropolitan area 1,823,210)
• Copenhagen (Denmark) 502,204 (metropolitan area 1,823,109) (facing the Sound)
• Gda?sk (Poland) 462,700
• Gdynia (Poland) 255,600
• Helsinki (Finland) 559,716 (metropolitan area 980,000)
• Riga (Latvia) 760,000
• Szczecin (Poland) 413,600
• Tallinn (Estonia) 401,774
• Kaliningrad (Russia) 400,000
• Malmö (Sweden) 259,579 (facing the Sound)
• Kiel (Germany) 250,000
• Lübeck (Germany) 216,100
• Rostock (Germany) 212,700
• Klaip?da (Lithuania) 194,400
• Turku (Finland) 175,000

Important ports (though not being big cities):

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• ?winouj?cie (Poland) 50,000
• Ventspils (Latvia) 44,000
• Baltiysk (Russia) 20,000
• Hanko (Finland) 10,000
• Ports of the Baltic Sea