Martin Antonenko
A Fixture
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Saint Petersburg Becomes Capital!
With just as brutal coercion as he had the new city built at the mouth of the Neva, Tsar Petr I operates the relocation of the capital of the Russian Empire from Moscow to Sankt Peterburg.
An Ukas of the tsar dated May 19, 1712 states:
The new city is from now on the capital and seat of government of the Russian Empire!
The Russian nobility has not the slightest desire to move to the new - unfinished - city, which is not necessarily blessed by the climate and in which during the winter months there is no daylight, but always cloudy twilight. In addition, Moscow had comfortable palaces ...
Thereupon the nobility and their families were summarily ordered into the city by the tsar! Those who refused were faced with draconian punishments - from the loss of property to the loss of life.
The families had to move into the city with their entire household and all servants, into houses whose architectural style and size were precisely laid down by the tsar.
And of course the nobles have to bear all the costs!
Two years later (1714) there were already 50,000 inhabited houses in Saint Petersburg; the city was the first in Russia to have an official police force and an effectively functioning fire brigade.
The city center was artificially lit in the evenings and at night, and the residents were forced to plant trees.
The city had been built just as brutally from 1706 and on a grand scale; the first construction work began as early as 1703 with the construction of the dominant Peter and Paul fortress on an island in the Neva ...:
The Tsar had a small wooden house built for himself in the immediate vicinity. The location was at the location of the building in the photo above at the bottom in the middle, where the museum ship can be seen ...:
In this building the former wooden house of the Tsar, which once stood in the same place, is now kept as a museum piece ...:
The tsar demonstratively lived in this extremely modest wooden house (when he was not at war with Sweden) and directed the construction work ...:
Building materials were a rare commodity at the Neva estuary!
In 1710, for example, a ukase was issued according to which every inhabitant of the city had to deliver 100 stones a year or to pay a heavy fine.
Every cargo ship calling at the city also had to deliver a precisely defined percentage of the load of stones.
Tens of thousands of serfs were forcibly recruited during the construction - and thousands died in the fever-infested swamp on which the city was built.
In all of Russia, the tsar banned the construction of stone houses by ukase - except in Saint Petersburg!
This was how building materials were obtained and, above all, skilled stonemasons who could only find work in the capital.
With an ukase dated September 12, 1715 (our era), Tsar Petr. I. all over Saint Petersburg wearing shoes and boots with nailed soles!
In the ukase it says literally:
"And if someone wears shoes or boots with soles made of staples and nails, (he) will be banished to Siberia and those dependent on him will be punished."
The reason for this seemingly grotesque decree is the tsar's concern for the pavement of the city of Saint Petersburg:
In many streets it was not made of stones as in other places, but of blocks of wood!
The wooden paving was chosen when the city was built because carts made less noise on it than on paving stones.
With the ukase, the tsar wanted to prevent nailed soles from wearing down the wooden pavement excessively!
Although the said ukase disappeared quietly into oblivion after Petr's death, the impractical but noise-insulating wooden paving was retained in Saint Petersburg into the 20th century - even if stone paving was increasingly used over the years!
In 1910, 16 larger streets were paved with wood - in particular the large riverside streets such as Schlosskai, Englischer Kai and Newskij-Kai (where the palaces of the rich stood) and streets through "better" districts such as Vladimir Prospect and Fontankastraße. Some of them are still today - for museum reasons ...:
This photo, taken around 1900 in front of the Winter Palace, clearly shows the wooden paving of the driveway ...:
This was retained until after the revolution - even if the blocks of wood with every flood, as here in 1903 ...
... floated up or got out of shape and had to be re-laid every time afterwards ...:
The following picture shows the new laying of wooden paving on the Schlosskai after the great flood in 1903 ...:
When the city was essentially in place, the Tsar also felt the desire for a residence in keeping with his status and had the “Petergof” palace built in the area around the new capital between 1714 and 1723.
However, he mainly used the palace for representative purposes. The small castle "Mon Plaisir", which he had built directly on the shore of the Gulf of Finland, he preferred ...:
Attempts to make Moscow the capital again after Tsar Petr's death (1725) meant only a brief interlude, 1727 to 1732.
After that, Saint Petersburg became and remained the capital of the Russian Empire until the Bolsheviks made Moscow the capital again in 1918 ...
During the German siege of Leningrad, Peterhof Palace and "Mon Plaisir" fell into German hands and were willfully (not through combat!) destroyed before the Hitler Wehrmacht withdrew ...:
Today both buildings - reconstructed with endless effort - are there again, as impressive as they were before.
With just as brutal coercion as he had the new city built at the mouth of the Neva, Tsar Petr I operates the relocation of the capital of the Russian Empire from Moscow to Sankt Peterburg.
An Ukas of the tsar dated May 19, 1712 states:
The new city is from now on the capital and seat of government of the Russian Empire!
The Russian nobility has not the slightest desire to move to the new - unfinished - city, which is not necessarily blessed by the climate and in which during the winter months there is no daylight, but always cloudy twilight. In addition, Moscow had comfortable palaces ...
Thereupon the nobility and their families were summarily ordered into the city by the tsar! Those who refused were faced with draconian punishments - from the loss of property to the loss of life.
The families had to move into the city with their entire household and all servants, into houses whose architectural style and size were precisely laid down by the tsar.
And of course the nobles have to bear all the costs!
Two years later (1714) there were already 50,000 inhabited houses in Saint Petersburg; the city was the first in Russia to have an official police force and an effectively functioning fire brigade.
The city center was artificially lit in the evenings and at night, and the residents were forced to plant trees.
The city had been built just as brutally from 1706 and on a grand scale; the first construction work began as early as 1703 with the construction of the dominant Peter and Paul fortress on an island in the Neva ...:
The Tsar had a small wooden house built for himself in the immediate vicinity. The location was at the location of the building in the photo above at the bottom in the middle, where the museum ship can be seen ...:
In this building the former wooden house of the Tsar, which once stood in the same place, is now kept as a museum piece ...:
The tsar demonstratively lived in this extremely modest wooden house (when he was not at war with Sweden) and directed the construction work ...:
Building materials were a rare commodity at the Neva estuary!
In 1710, for example, a ukase was issued according to which every inhabitant of the city had to deliver 100 stones a year or to pay a heavy fine.
Every cargo ship calling at the city also had to deliver a precisely defined percentage of the load of stones.
Tens of thousands of serfs were forcibly recruited during the construction - and thousands died in the fever-infested swamp on which the city was built.
In all of Russia, the tsar banned the construction of stone houses by ukase - except in Saint Petersburg!
This was how building materials were obtained and, above all, skilled stonemasons who could only find work in the capital.
With an ukase dated September 12, 1715 (our era), Tsar Petr. I. all over Saint Petersburg wearing shoes and boots with nailed soles!
In the ukase it says literally:
"And if someone wears shoes or boots with soles made of staples and nails, (he) will be banished to Siberia and those dependent on him will be punished."
The reason for this seemingly grotesque decree is the tsar's concern for the pavement of the city of Saint Petersburg:
In many streets it was not made of stones as in other places, but of blocks of wood!
The wooden paving was chosen when the city was built because carts made less noise on it than on paving stones.
With the ukase, the tsar wanted to prevent nailed soles from wearing down the wooden pavement excessively!
Although the said ukase disappeared quietly into oblivion after Petr's death, the impractical but noise-insulating wooden paving was retained in Saint Petersburg into the 20th century - even if stone paving was increasingly used over the years!
In 1910, 16 larger streets were paved with wood - in particular the large riverside streets such as Schlosskai, Englischer Kai and Newskij-Kai (where the palaces of the rich stood) and streets through "better" districts such as Vladimir Prospect and Fontankastraße. Some of them are still today - for museum reasons ...:
This photo, taken around 1900 in front of the Winter Palace, clearly shows the wooden paving of the driveway ...:
This was retained until after the revolution - even if the blocks of wood with every flood, as here in 1903 ...
... floated up or got out of shape and had to be re-laid every time afterwards ...:
The following picture shows the new laying of wooden paving on the Schlosskai after the great flood in 1903 ...:
When the city was essentially in place, the Tsar also felt the desire for a residence in keeping with his status and had the “Petergof” palace built in the area around the new capital between 1714 and 1723.
However, he mainly used the palace for representative purposes. The small castle "Mon Plaisir", which he had built directly on the shore of the Gulf of Finland, he preferred ...:
Attempts to make Moscow the capital again after Tsar Petr's death (1725) meant only a brief interlude, 1727 to 1732.
After that, Saint Petersburg became and remained the capital of the Russian Empire until the Bolsheviks made Moscow the capital again in 1918 ...
During the German siege of Leningrad, Peterhof Palace and "Mon Plaisir" fell into German hands and were willfully (not through combat!) destroyed before the Hitler Wehrmacht withdrew ...:
Today both buildings - reconstructed with endless effort - are there again, as impressive as they were before.
