Hammerfest is not only the northernmost town in the world (70”39’48”), but also the oldest town in the North of Norway (1789) and the first town in Northern Europe to get electric street lighting produced purely from water power in 1891. The town was an important trading post with the Russians for the 100 years preceding the Russian Revolution. It has been burnt down twice, and was the only Norwegian town attacked during the Napoleonic War of 1809. Hammerfest is place from which the great Polar Explorers started their Arctic expeditions, and where Struve concluded his measurements of the earth in 1852. The Meridian Column is a symbol of this, and in 2005 the monument was included on the UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites.