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Petropavlovskaya Fotress, Peter and Paul Fortress, State Museum of the History of St. Petersburg (Saint Petersburg)

3 Peter and Paul Fortress, Saint Petersburg (tel.: +7 812 230-64-31), Metro station: "Gorkovskaya".

Map

http://www.spbmuseum.ru

Construction of the Peter and Paul Fortress (the Fortress, for short), which laid the foundation of Saint Petersburg, started on 16th May 1703. The Fortress was built on the Zayachy Island (750 meter [2460 feet] long and 400 meter [1310 feet] wide). During the 1700–1721 Great Northern War, when the Russian state was waging a difficult struggle against Sweden for access to the Baltic Sea, the Fortress primarily served as a military facility designed to protect the mouth of the Neva River.

However, being too small and not wide enough for a powerful fortress, the island was significantly expanded before the construction works started. This is why the construction of bastions and curtain walls was preceded by enlargement of the island's area by approximately 16,000 square meters (173,000 square feet), primarily from the side of the Neva River.

Since it was necessary to construct the Fortress in a very short time, the fortification structures were originally made of wood and earth. Peter the Great appointed his companions Kirill Naryshkin, Ivan Trubetskoy, Nikita Zotov, Gavriil Golovkin and Aleksandr Menshikov to supervise the construction of bastions. The completed bastions were named after their constructors. However, the construction of the sixth bastion was personally supervised by the tsar, and this bastion was named the Tsar Bastion or the Bastion of Peter the Great. After the construction of the wood and earth fortifications had been completed by the autumn of 1703, 269 cannons were installed there. During the three ages of its existence, the Fortress did not have to participate in military action. However, many times salvoes of its cannons celebrated Russia's military victories and other important events in the life of the Russian state.

A canal was dug through the whole length of the Zayachy Island, for the purpose of water supply in case of a siege as well as for the purpose of bringing construction materials; this canal was demolished in 1882.

In 1706, works on new, stone fortifications started. On 30th May 1706, Peter the Great personally laid the foundation stone of the Menshikov Bastion. In 1707, improvement works on the Golovkin and Zotov Bastions started, followed in 1708 by improvement works on the Trubetskoy Bastion. Construction of the stone Bastion of Peter the Great started in 1717, while the foundations of the stone Naryshkin Bastion (later renamed the Bastion of Catherine) were laid in 1725. The works were supervised by Domenico Trezzini. However, the works on the stone fortress lingered for several decades and were completed only thanks to activities of the military engineer Burkhard Christoph von Munnich who was the policemaster general of Saint Petersburg. In 1730–1733, two stone ravelins were constructed to his design; these ravelins were named the Ioann Ravelin and the Aleksey Ravelin, after the names of the brother and father of Peter the Great. By 1740, the improvement works had been completed. This date is carved on the pediment of the Fortress Ioann Gates. The northern approaches to the Fortress were protected with an additional fortification structure, the Kronwerk.

In 1703, a wooden church was built; in spring of 1704, the church was consecrated and named after Sts. Peter and Paul the Apostles. In 1712, on its location, the construction works on the stone Peter and Paul Cathedral started; the cathedral was consecrated in 1733. In time, the cathedral would become the burial place of the members of the Imperial family.

Gradually, the architectural ensemble of the Fortress was forming. Naturally, the first structures inside the Fortress served military functions: these were the Commander's House and the Engineers' House (a house for the engineering team of the fortress). Later, these houses would be rebuilt (the rebuilding works were accompanied by construction of the building of the Detention Quarters for officers). In the early 19th century, the Artillery Armoury, the Platz-Major's House, the Uber-Officers' House were constructed. In the early 20th century, the Staff Officers' Wing was constructed. However, at the same time civil buildings appeared in the Fortress. Even during the first years of its existence, the Main Pharmacy existed on the Zayachy Island, in the mid 19th century a special wing for keeping the Little Boat of Peter the Great was constructed, in the 19th century the Church House was built, and in the early 20th century the building of the Archive of the Ministry of War was constructed.

Since 1724, the Fortress had housed the monetary agency, which was originally allocated rooms in the Trubetskoy Bastion and later also in the Naryshkin Bastion. In the very beginning of the 19th century, a special building of the Mint was constructed opposite the Peter and Paul Cathedral. Later, for the minting industry, several other buildings (the Main Treasury, the Fund Capitals and the House of Weights and Measures) would be constructed and a number of rooms in the fortification structures of the Fortress would be allocated.

As early as in the first quarter of the 18th century, the first political prisoners appeared in the Fortress. Since that time and until the early 20th century, the Fortress served as a political prison. In the second half of the 18th century, a wooden building of the prison was constructed in the Aleksey Ravelin. In 1796–1797, it was replaced by a stone building dubbed the Secret House. After the building of the Prison was constructed in the Trubetskoy Bastion in 1869–1872, the Secret House was disassembled. Other rooms of the Fortress were also used for the imprisonment purposes.

As time progressed, the Fortress was also becoming a memorial museum. In the early 19th century, during the reign of Emperor Alexander I, the Fortress was opened to the public for the first time. In the 1900s, the Peter and Paul Cathedral hosted guided tours of the Imperial necropolis.

In October of 1917, during the 1917 Russian Revolution, the Fortress became a field headquarters of the Petrograd Military Revolutionary Committee that supervised the armed revolt in Saint Petersburg (then called Petrograd) and the seizure of the Winter Palace. During the Second World War, the grave of Peter the Great in the Peter and Paul Cathedral was one of the places where protectors of Leningrad sworn the military oath.

In 1954, the complex of the Fortress' buildings was handed over to the State Museum of Leningrad's (Saint Petersburg's) History (the Museum, for short). This marked a new stage in the development of the Fortress. Since then, restoration works have been performed very actively. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, collections, departments, and the directorate of the Museum moved to the Fortress. In 1971, the first large exhibition on the history of the 18th, 19th and early 20th century Saint Petersburg's architecture was opened in the Fortress. Since that time, the area of the Fortress has been actively developed for exhibitions. Since the late 1980s, the Fortress has also hosted various celebratory events of the city scale.

Thus, the Fortress, which was founded as a first class fortification structure, has a truly multifaceted history of its development.

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Petropavlovskaya Fotress, Peter and Paul Fortress, State Museum of the History of St. Petersburg



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