Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Peter's Paradise
Peter did not wait for the war to end before he started building. The wooden palisade
encampment on Hare Isle became the red-brick Peter and Paul Fortress (
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Dutch tongue and after his patron saint, who stands guard before the gates to paradise.
There was a reason why until now the area had only attracted a few Finnish fisher-
men for settlement. It was a swamp. The Neva River runs from nearby Lake Ladoga,
Europe's largest, and flows into the Gulf of Finland through a low-lying delta of
marshy, flood-prone islands, more manageable for moose than man. Although it is
close to the Arctic Circle, winds and waters from the Atlantic bring moderate and
moist weather. This means that winter, during which the delta freezes up, is relatively
short: a matter of no small significance to Peter.
Peter's vision for the new capital was grandiose; so was the task ahead. To find
enough dry ground for building, swamps were drained and wetlands filled. To protect
the land from flooding, seawalls were built and canals dug. A hands-on autocrat, Peter
pitched in with the hammering, sawing and joining. Thousands of fortune-seeking for-
eigners were imported to lend expertise: architects and engineers to design the city's
intricate waterways, and craftsmen and masons to chisel its stone foundations. The
hard labour of digging ditches and moving muck was performed by nonvoluntary re-
cruits. Peter pressed 30,000 peasant serfs per year into capital construction gangs, plus
Russian convict labourers and Swedish prisoners of war. The work regimen was strict
and living conditions were stark: more than 100,000 died. But those who survived
could earn personal freedom and a small piece of marshland to call their own.
Russia's new city by the sea began to take shape, inspired by Peter's recollections
of canal-lined Amsterdam. The locus of power was the military stronghold, the Peter
and Paul Fortress. Next, he ordered the chief accompaniments of tsarist authority - a
church and a prison. The first tavern was the German-owned Triumphant Osteria of
the Four Frigates, where Peter would order his favourite drink - vodka with cayenne
pepper. The first stone palace belonged to the former Dutch merchant captain and first
commander of Russia's Baltic Fleet, Cornelius Cruys. A more impressive dwelling,
Alexander Menshikov, soon adorned the Vasilevsky Island embankment.
