But is history now catching up with St Petersburg? The tsar only arrived the following month. But although untrue, this myth perfectly encapsulates the origins of St Petersburg.
Built on an inhospitable swamp at the cost of thousands of lives, it was brought into being through the iron will of Peter, who needed a warm-water port and a fortress against the Swedes. St Petersburg survived its adverse beginnings and then a revolution, a catastrophic siege in the second world war and seven decades of communist rule, to become the third largest city in Europe. Now, however, it faces the twin challenge of preserving its past while solving quality-of-life problems to ensure its future.
The establishment of St Petersburg is a story that has been both celebrated and deplored in Russia, with history books trumpeting the achievement while authors lament its unnatural and bloody creation. Starting with the construction of the Peter and Paul Fortress, Peter dragooned thousands of conscripts, convicts and prisoners of war to erect the city from scratch in a place where snow can fall as early as September and as late as May.
Tree trunks had to be sunk into the swampy ground before it could support structures. Living in ramshackle quarters and working with inadequate tools β often digging by hand and carrying the dirt in the front of their shirts β these involuntary labourers died in their thousands, carried off by disease or frequent flooding. Peter had got the idea for his reforms and his new capital during his travels through Europe, when he worked for a time in a shipbuilding yard in Amsterdam. Wanting his new city to be similarly based around the sea, he initially forbade bridges, even though a variety of officials and even his own physician died while navigating the treacherous Neva in small boats.
It is this style of building, with its white columns, arched windows and pastel-coloured walls typically begrimed by the harsh climate that gives the city much of its atmosphere of picturesque decay. Built in the s with a baroque yellow-and-white facade, the inside of the mansion was adorned with European furnishings and works by artists including Raphael, Van Dyck and Rembrandt.
