Founded on marshy islands in 1703 by a tsar determined to give Russia a window on Europe (1703)
Peter the Great; the Peter and Paul Fortress was the first structure
Geography · Cities
Saint Petersburg
founded 27 May 1703
Russia — on the Neva delta, on the Gulf of Finland
Founded by Peter the Great on marshland captured from Sweden, and built as a deliberate European window for Russia, it served as the imperial capital from 1712 until 1918. It has changed its name three times in the past century, endured a siege of almost nine hundred days in the Second World War, and remains Russia's second city and the northernmost with a population over a million.
How to spot them
- ▸Built from nothing on a river delta in 1703 by a tsar who wanted a European port
- ▸Quiz clue: 'Petrograd', 'Leningrad', 'the Winter Palace', 'the Bronze Horseman', 'White Nights'
- ▸Capital of its country for around two centuries, but not today
- ▸The 872-day siege of 1941–44
Key facts
It was renamed twice in ten years, in 1914 and again in 1924, and took its original name back in 1991 (1914, 1924, 1991)
Petrograd (de-Germanised in the First World War), then Leningrad, then the original name after a referendum
Its German-sounding name was dropped in 1914 because the country was at war with Germany (1914)
It became Petrograd
Besieged for 872 days from 1941, at a cost of around a million civilian lives (1941–1944)
Supplies crossed frozen Lake Ladoga on the 'Road of Life'
Falconet's equestrian statue of its founder, on a vast granite boulder, inspired a Pushkin poem (1782)
The Bronze Horseman; the base is the Thunder Stone
Its green-and-white Baroque royal palace, by Rastrelli, now anchors one of the world's largest art museums (1754–1762)
The Winter Palace and the Hermitage Museum
In midsummer its nights never fully darken, and the city holds a festival named for them
The White Nights, a consequence of a latitude of almost 60 degrees north
Quick-fire facts
- •Russia's imperial capital from 1712 until March 1918, when the Bolsheviks moved the government to Moscow
- •It stands on the Neva, which flows from Lake Ladoga into the Gulf of Finland
- •Russia's second most populous city, with over five million people; the world's northernmost city of more than a million
- •Nicknames: the Venice of the North, the Window on the West, and simply Piter
- •Nevsky Prospekt is the main avenue; the Admiralty spire closes its western end
- •The Church of the Saviour on Spilled Blood marks the spot where Alexander II was assassinated in 1881
- •The cruiser Aurora fired the blank shot signalling the storming of the Winter Palace in October 1917
- •The Mariinsky Theatre, known as the Kirov in Soviet times, is its opera and ballet house
- •The Historic Centre of Saint Petersburg and Related Groups of Monuments was inscribed by UNESCO in 1990
Drill it — 8 cards
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Sources
- UNESCO World Heritage Centre — Historic Centre of Saint Petersburg and Related Groups of Monuments
- Encyclopaedia Britannica — St Petersburg