Peter and Paul Fortress in St. Petersburg

Peter and Paul Fortress is a unique military, historical and architectural monument, the fate of which is closely intertwined with the fate of the whole of Russia. It was laid on May 16 (27), 1703 and was intended to protect the lands conquered during the Northern War with Sweden. After the capture of the Swedish fortress of Nyenshants, Peter I and his entourage, traveling around the islands of the Neva delta in search of a place for a new Russian fortification, drew attention to this conveniently located island.

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History of the Peter and Paul Fortress

‘ Petropavlovsk Fortress – a symbol of Russian influence on the Baltic shores

The Peter and Paul Fortress was built with great haste, fearing an attack by the Swedes. To speed things up, the tsar and his cronies themselves supervised the work. It was built as an exemplary fortification of the bastion system, and, as contemporaries wrote, “His Majesty himself composed the blueprint of this fortress”. In plan the fortress is an elongated hexagon with bastions, five of which are named after Peter’s associates, and one – the Sovereign. Professional management was carried out by the Swiss architect and engineer Domenico Trezzini, specially invited by Peter the Great.

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The fortress was built by Russian soldiers, captured Swedes, peasants who were driven from all parts of Russia on the tsar’s order, and even convicts who served their sentences here. Labor conditions were hard, the death rate from epidemics, hunger and cold was very high. Nevertheless, the work did not stop for a minute.

For its time, the Peter and Paul Fortress was a first-class example of military engineering. In its construction were used the latest achievements of Western European fortification. The height of its walls – 9 meters, thickness – about 20 meters, on all sides it is surrounded by the river.

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‘ Dawn over the Peter and Paul Fortress
‘ St. John’s Ravelin and Petrovsky Gates

The territory of the fortress can be accessed via the St. John’s Bridge or the Kronverk Bridge. Two ravelins (Ioannovsky and Alexeevsky) covered the most vulnerable places of the fortress – entrances from the west and north. Ditches were dug between the ravelins and the fortress wall (filled in at the end of the XIX century), over which lift bridges were thrown. If you go from the metro station “Gorkovskaya”, you need to cross the Kronverksky channel on the oldest in the city Ioannovsky bridge (pay attention to the small monument to the hare on the left of the bridge – a reminder that the bridge leads to Zayachy Island). Then we enter St. John’s Gate, built during the reign of Empress Anna Ioannovna and named so in honor of her father, the brother of Peter the Great. The same name is also given to the ravelin where the gate is located.

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‘ St. John’s Gate
‘ Petrovsky Gate

In St. John’s Ravelin there are ticket offices where tickets to the museums available on the territory of the fortress are sold. You can buy a ticket only to the cathedral, or you can use a single ticket to visit different museums and exhibitions. Detailed plans of the fortress, posted on the stands in front of the Petrovsky Gate, will help you make your route.

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Also in St. John’s Ravelin there is a museum “History of Cosmonautics and Rocket Technology”. It would seem, what does this have to do with cosmonautics? And the whole point is that in the 1930s, the fortress housed test benches and workshops of the Gas Dynamic Laboratory, where the world’s first electrothermal rocket engine was tested. So those interested can familiarize themselves with the history of Soviet rocket technology. Here you can see the engines of the Vostok and Soyuz launch vehicles, flight suits of cosmonaut pilots and other space relics.

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The fortress courtyard and bastions

Passing through the Petrovsky Gate, pay attention to the thickness of the fortress wall – more than 20 meters. Inside it there were two-story chambers for guns, casemates and staircases and corridors connecting them. Behind the gate on the left one can see the Sovereign’s bastion with a ramp for lifting cannons.

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‘ Engineering House
‘ Artillery Zeikhgauz

Inside the fortress there are a number of ancient buildings. On the right is the building of the Artillery Zeikhgauz (storehouse of uniforms and equipment), on the left is the Engineering House, where there were workshops and warehouses of the engineering team engaged in construction and repair work in the fortress. Now the Museum of Old Petersburg is located in the Engineering House. On the other side of the Engineering House there is a children’s interactive exposition “Time Street”, which is a symbolic street built up with houses of different epochs. The peculiarity of this exhibition is that children are allowed to literally touch history, hold ancient objects in their hands and try to use them for their intended purpose.

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In the Nevskaya Courtina, leading from the Gosudarev to the Naryshkin Bastion, there is a workshop of antique types of graphics “Pechatnya”. The antique printing presses located here are not only exhibits, but also operating equipment of the workshop. Anyone can try their hand at creating lithography or monotype. In addition, in the Nevskaya kurtina there is an exposition telling about the history of the Peter and Paul Fortress.

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‘ Nevskie Vorota from the side of the pier

At the command of Catherine II, the walls of the kurtines and bastions facing the Neva River were “clothed with stone”, as the inscriptions on them say.

‘ At 12 o’clock, a cannon shot comes from the Peter and Paul Fortress

Every day at exactly noon, preserving an old St. Petersburg tradition, a signal shot from the vest cannon is heard from the Naryshkin bastion. During the reign of Peter the Great, the cannon signaled the beginning and end of work in the fortress, and also announced the rise of the water level in the Neva. Now the citizens check the accuracy of their watches by the shot.

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The building in front of the Nevsky Gate is the former brig, now it is the directorate of the museum-reserve. Not far from the main alley is an unusual bronze monument to Peter the Great, presented to the city in 1991 by the Leningrad artist and sculptor Mikhail Shemyakin, now working in the United States. The monument, stylized as the famous “wax persona” of Peter, surprises with a deliberate distortion of the figure’s proportions – a small head, excessively broad shoulders, grotesquely long hands, knees and feet. It is said that the author deliberately allowed this disproportion, bordering on eccentricity, to sharpen the perception of the controversial personality of the reformist tsar. Although the monument itself and its installation in the center of the fortress still cause unceasing controversy and polar assessments of art historians, nevertheless Shemyakin’s work is always surrounded by crowds of tourists, eager to touch the long fingers of the bronze emperor or climb into his lap.

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Nearby is the two-story building of the Commandant’s House, where there was a spacious office apartment of the fortress commandant and his office. The commandant’s duties were mainly military and economic, in particular the protection of the fortress and supervision of the prison. Interrogations of prisoners and trials took place in this house many times. For example, the memorial hall where the investigating committee for the Decembrists’ case worked in 1826 is still preserved here.

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‘ The figure of an angel with a cross on the spire of the Peter and Paul Cathedral

The spire of the bell tower was crowned with the figure of an angel with a cross, soaring aloft. The angel above the city, according to the creators’ plan, was to protect the new Russian capital from the vicissitudes of fate.

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The construction and decoration of the cathedral was completed only by 1733. Peter did not manage to live to see this significant moment. That year, on the Day of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul (June 29) at the consecration of the cathedral was already present Empress Anna Ioannovna, who, as wrote “St. Petersburg Vedomosti”, “received from all foreign and local ministers and ladies about that congratulatory compliments.”

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For almost a quarter of a century the cathedral kept its appearance unchanged. But in the middle of the XVIII century. lightning caught fire from the spire of the belfry. Therefore, during the construction of a new spire Catherine II ordered to arrange “an electric outlet for the repulsion of the shock and vapor from lightning occurring.”

‘ View of the Peter and Paul Fortress and the spire of the cathedral
‘ The chime clock and the carillon

Although the lightning rod had the desired effect, the city was often hit by “great storms” that bent the spire and spoiled the figure of the angel with the cross. Thus, in 1829 during one such storm the angel was threateningly tilted. The roofer Pyotr Telushkin, without scaffolding, deftly using devices made of only ropes, managed to climb to the top of the spire and make the necessary repairs. This feat was later repeated by professional climbers, who during the Great Patriotic War camouflaged the gilded spire so that it could not serve as a landmark for Nazi aircraft.

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In the 19th century, the destruction of the wooden frame of the spire became more and more pronounced. It was decided to dismantle the old spire and replace the wooden structures with metal ones. In this case, the total height of the cathedral increased by 16 meters and reached 122.5 meters. To this day, the Peter and Paul Cathedral is the highest architectural structure of St. Petersburg and one of the leading dominants in the panorama of the Neva banks. Only the modern television tower is higher than it.

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The wooden gilded iconostasis of baroque forms, made in Moscow to a drawing by architect Zarudny, is also unusual. It has the form of a magnificent triumphal arch and is a kind of monument in honor of the conclusion of the Peace of Nystadt. The iconostasis is filled with many carved arches, sculptures, raised shields and crossed swords, reminding of Russia’s military exploits in the Northern War. It was brought from Moscow in disassembled form, in the cathedral itself assembled and gilded here.

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‘ Bust of Peter the Great

Opposite the iconostasis is an unconventional for Orthodox churches carved gilded pulpit, intended for preaching. It is decorated with statues of the apostles Peter and Paul.

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At the opposite pylon is the royal seat – a low platform, upholstered in crimson velvet with gold embroidery and topped with a gilded carved crown. During the service in the cathedral the emperor stood there. There was never an armchair, and the tsar did not sit down during the services.

Traditionally, emperors came to the cathedral after coronation to ask for blessing for the reign, and when leaving the capital – to say goodbye to the graves of their parents. The temple combined the functions of a court and cathedral, and also served as a burial vault for Russian emperors and members of their families.

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Burials in the cathedral

The idea of turning the cathedral into an imperial tomb belonged to Peter himself. The first tomb in the still wooden Peter and Paul Church was installed when the tsar’s two-year-old daughter Catherine died. Then, even before the stone church was completed, the wife of Tsarevich Alexei, Crown Princess Charlotte, Peter the Great’s sister Maria and Tsarevich Alexei himself, who died in the casemates of the fortress, were buried here. They are buried at the entrance under the staircase to the bell tower.

‘ Peter and Paul Fortress in winter

A magnificent stained glass window from the tomb of the Resurrection of Christ, destroyed by a blast wave during the war, has recently been recreated by modern St. Petersburg craftsmen. Temporarily, while the restoration of the tomb is underway, it is exhibited in a separate room at the exit of the cathedral.

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Excursion route to the bell tower of the Peter and Paul Cathedral. “Three centuries above the city.”

From May 1 to September 15 you can climb the highest structure of the historical part of the city – the bell tower of the Peter and Paul Cathedral. The excursion route allows you to see the mechanism of chimes and a unique complex of bells of the cathedral, From the bell tower offers a stunning view of the city.

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Cathedral Square

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Near the creation of the museum in 1975, on the 150th anniversary of the Decembrist uprising, a memorial obelisk made in the form of a granite pyramid was unveiled at the place of execution of its five leaders. It bears a medallion with embossed profiles of the five Decembrists executed at the crown beams – Pestel, Ryleyev, Kakhovsky, Muravyov-Apostol and Bestuzhev-Ryumin. A terrible execution befell them – they were hanged. And three of the five fell into the pit under the gallows, because the poor quality ropes could not withstand the weight of their bodies. They had to send for new ropes, and in the meantime the three condemned men waited, looking at the bodies of their hanged comrades and at the coffins prepared, although according to the unwritten tradition of the time, those who had fallen off the gallows should have been pardoned. “Poor Russia! They don’t know how to hang properly!” – said Sergei Muravyov-Apostol. The bodies of the executed remained on the gallows all day. At night they were removed and buried somewhere on the island of Golodai.

On the obelisk erected in their honor are the words of Pushkin, addressed to his friend Pushchin, exiled to Siberia for participation in the December uprising:

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Comrade, believe: it will rise,The star of captivating happiness,Russia will rise from her sleep,And on the wreckage of autocracy,Our names will be inscribed!

Museum of the History of Money

Since the fall of 2016, a museum dedicated to the history of domestic money circulation and technologies of production of paper and metal signs has been operating on the territory of the Peter and Paul Fortress. This is one of the most interactive museums in St. Petersburg. The exposition “History of Money” is located in the building of the Anninsky Cavalier of the Golovkin Bastion. The dominant feature of the exhibition space is the installation “Million”, consisting of 1,000,000 coins of 1 ruble each. The height of the tower of coins is 3.2 m.

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Opening hours: daily from 10.00 to 20.00, except Thursday. The ticket office closes half an hour earlier. The expositions can be viewed independently or as part of a tour – at 11:00, 13:00, 15:00, 18:30. The cost of entrance tickets is 200 rubles for adults, 100 rubles for privileged categories of citizens. Excursion program adds 50 rubles to the ticket price.

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Visitors

  • Address: Zayachy Island, Peter and Paul Fortress, 3. (metro station “Gorkovskaya”).
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  • Tel: 230-64-31, 230-03-29.
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  • Peter and Paul Cathedral is open every day, except Wed, from 10.00 to 18.00 (in summer until 19.00). In the summer season (from May 1 to September 30) works without weekends.
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  • Entrance to the territory of Hare Island from 06.00 to 22.00.
  • The main expositions of the museum are open from 11.00 to 18.00 (in summer until 19.00) every day except Wed.
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  • Single ticket 600 p. (students – 350 p., pensioners – 250 p.).
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  • Peter and Paul Cathedral – 450 p. (students – 250 p., pensioners – 200 p.)
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  • Prison of Trubetskoy Bastion – 200 p., students – 120 p., pensioners – 120 p.
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Ticket prices and opening hours can be found on the official website of the Peter and Paul Fortress.

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