St. Petersburg: What’s in a Name? - The Wise World Traveler: Becoming a Part of All that You Meet - page 145

ies were commanded to build suitable homes in Peter's city; each was to bring wagonloads
of quarried stone. Forty thousand convicts and serfs labored for seven years (1709-1716),
digging canals, shoring stream and riverbanks, and constructing the first buildings of St.
Petersburg. In 1712, by royal edict, all government ministries and all foreign embassies
were commanded to move to the city. In 1714, with docks and warehouses laid out, a royal
edict ( ukase ) commanded that every ship and wagon entering the city bring a specified
number of building stones. (The edict remained in force until 1779.)
As the city began to rise from the mud flats and swamps of the River Neva, its eye-
catching beauty and majesty were assured by edicts that prescribed the height of buildings,
their color, the width of city streets, and their periodic cleaning. The city is a monument
to its creator, and his presence is manifest in the large bronze statue standing close to the
Neva's bank in front of the Imperial Winter Palace, now home to the Hermitage Museum
of Art. Commissioned by his successor and admirer, Catherine the Great, Peter surveys his
city astride his horse; the horse rears on its great rock plinth, trampling underfoot a great
snake that symbolizes Peter's victory over the Swedes.
WHY THE NAME “ST. PETERSBURG?”
Peter came to the throne at age ten, an engine of energy and curiosity about the world and
how mechanical things worked. In 1607, he led what would today be called a fact-finding
mission of 250 to the West, to bring home to Russia the technical skills of the West, espe-
cially in the realms of shipbuilding and the machines of war. Peter traveled not as Great
Lord and Tsar but as an improbably disguised (given his height and royal authority) lesser
member of the entourage named Peter Mikhailov. The Great Embassy, as it was formally
called, concentrated its energies on the two greatest shipbuilding and merchant countries of
Europe, England and Holland.
It was Holland that gave Peter his greatest practical education. He bought carpenter's
tools and worked as a shipwright. He lodged with a blacksmith's family. He ate in taverns.
He took time off from work at the shipyard to visit sawmills, paper mills, and factories.
His time in Holland so pleased him that when his new city on the Neva was being built,
he named it after the patron saint of Holland, Sankt Peter—and not incidentally, reminding
the world that he, too, carried a saint's name.
ST. PETERSBURG: WHAT'S IN A NAME?
Citizens of St. Petersburg pose an unusual conundrum: “My great grandfather was born in
St. Petersburg. My grandfather was born in Petrograd. My father and I were born in Len-
ingrad. And my own son was born in St. Petersburg. And yet, our family has never left
town.” The response, of course, is that St. Petersburg has endured a string of name changes.
Peter named St. Petersburg, and its architectural glory reflects that name. Two hundred