St. Petersburg's 300th

The Real Tercentennial

May 8 marks the 300th anniversary of the official inauguration of St. Petersburg as the capital of the Russian state and the day when Peter I moved the seat of government from Moscow, for which he had little regard, to his beloved creation, founded just ten years earlier.

The fact that the city rested on treacherous swampland, that its cold and damp climate would be the death of many, and that it would be plagued by floods – none of this worried Peter. He had already mapped out an array of straight lines representing the city’s future streets, and the great architect Domenico Trezzini had begun to erect beautiful buildings, the construction of which would cost the lives of thousands of soldiers and peasants driven to the banks of the Gulf of Finland to fulfill Peter’s dream.