PETER
AND PAUL FORTRESS
St.
Petersburg,
Russia
The Peter and Paul Fortress is the
heart of St.
Petersburg
and the place where it was first envisioned by Emperor Peter the Great
in 1703.
In May of that year Peter decided that the small island called
‘Hare Island’
would be the site for his fortification. He had just seized the area
from a
Swedish force who were garrisoned in a dilapidated old fortress.
Peter had big
plans, not only for his
Fortress, but also for
a new City for the Russian Empire – one which faced Europe,
looked European and
would allow the Russian people access to a sea which wasn’t
frozen for half the
year. Peter knew that this new City he had in his head would need
serious
protection and so he ordered the architect Domenico Trezzini to design
the six
bastioned fortress in the best place to allow a view of all the City.
Trezzini
initially built from wood and earth, but as progress on the City
continued
(much of which he also designed) the Fortress was rebuilt in stone. By
1740 it
was complete in much the form it has today.
As it happened
there was never a
counter-attack from Sweden.
Indeed, the building of St. Petersburg seems to have marked a change in
the
Swedish psyche and their militant domination of the Baltic began to
change to
their cherish neutrality of today.
So from as
early as 1720 the Peter and
Paul Fortress was
little more than a prison for high-ranking and political prisoners. The
first
person recorded to have escaped from imprisonment here was the
anarchist Peter
Kopotkin who did so in 1876. Amongst the other famous prisoners here
are
Tsarevich Alexei Petrovich, Tadeusz Kościusko, Dostoevsky, Gorky,
Trotsky and,
oddly, Josip Tito (future president of Yugoslavia).
The closest
thing the Fortress ever saw
to real action was
during the Revolutions of 1917. In the abortive February Revolution it
was
attached by soldiers of the Pavlovskii regiment. A number of Tsarist
officials
found themselves imprisoned in the Fortress and briefly the Emperor
himself was
up to join them. In the end he was placed under house arrest in the
Winter
Palace (‘house arrest’ being something of an odd term for a
building so
large!). By July 6 the Revolution was done and those inside the
Fortress were
freed.
In October,
though, it was a different
matter. There was
very little resistance now to the Bolshevik takeover. Nicholas II had
continued
to make a number of exceptionally poor decisions and the people had had
enough.
The Fortress fell to the Bolsheviks without a struggle and the blank
salvo of
the nearby Cruiser Aurora marked the beginning of the Revolution that
would
change Russia. The guns of the Fortress turned and fired for the only
time in
anger at the Winter Palace across the Neva. Only two shells hit and the
following day the Winter Palace was in Revolutionary hands. Once again
the
Fortress became a prison for ousted government officials.
In 1924 the
whole site became a Museum
and despite some
damage during the Siege of Leningrad in World War II it is now the
second most
famous Museum in St. Petersburg – after the Hermitage, of course.
Aside from the
fortifications the
Fortress also contains the
Cathedral of St. Peter and St. Paul
–
built between 1712 and 1733 and the last
resting place for the majority of the Russian Emperors and Empresses,
the still
functioning Royal Mint, the prison cells of the Trubetskoy Bastion, the
Grand
Ducal Mansion of 1896 and the City Museum. At noon each day a cannon is
fired
and during the summer the beach which abuts the Fortress is often
crowded with
sun-worshippers.
A walk through
the Peter and Paul
Fortress is a walk through
the history of Russia and is an essential part of any visit to this
most
beguiling of cities.
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to Castles of Russia
©
Text copyright - Raving Loony Productions and Andrew J. Müller
© Photos and Artwork - Andrew J. and Jacqui Müller
© Web Design and Layout - Andrew J. Müller
2019
