Peter and Paul Fortress: The Founding Stronghold of Saint Petersburg
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.8
- Popularity
- Very High
- Country
- Russia
- Primary era
- Early Modern
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Early Modern, Modern
- Civilizations
- Russian
- Site type
- Military
- Remains
- Fort
On this page24 sections
History
The Peter and Paul Fortress is a Russian fortification on Hare Island in Saint Petersburg, Russia, founded on 27 May 1703 in the early eighteenth century during the reign of Peter I, or Peter the Great. Its foundation date, 16 May in the Julian calendar, is conventionally treated as the beginning of Saint Petersburg, whose historical core grew around the fortress. The complex was built according to the bastion system associated with the French engineer Vauban, while its cathedral and later masonry buildings became important examples of early Russian Baroque architecture.
Foundation during the Great Northern War
The site was chosen soon after Russian forces captured the Swedish fortress of Nyenschantz and the town of Nyen on 1 May 1703 during the Great Northern War, a conflict fought mainly between Sweden and a coalition led by Russia from 1700 to 1721. Russian victory in the war allowed the establishment of Saint Petersburg on territory formerly controlled by Sweden. Hare Island occupied the broadest part of the Neva, where the fortress could control river shipping. Surrounding marshes made an attack from nearby Petersburg Island difficult.
Peter I personally selected the location during his survey of the Neva delta. A foundation tradition says that he marked out the future city and placed relics of Saint Andrew in a stone container, although the details of the story and Peter’s presence at the site on the foundation date remain disputed. Another attribution credits Alexander Menshikov with founding the fortress. From 1703 it was officially called Saint Petersburg Fortress, and between 1914 and 1917 it was known as Petrograd Fortress.
Initial plans were prepared in 1703 by the Saxon engineer W. A. Kirschtenstein and the French engineer Gaspard-Joseph Lambert. Domenico Trezzini directed the later reconstruction in stone. The first works proceeded rapidly in earth and timber during 1703 and 1704. Soldiers and workers came from Schlotburg and Schlüsselburg, while by autumn about 12,000 people from various Russian cities were engaged in earthworks and timber cutting. The fortress was largely complete by April 1704, and a lantern lit on the Sovereign Bastion on 4 April signalled completion.
Six bastions were built under the supervision and with the participation of Peter’s associates Alexander Menshikov, Kirill Naryshkin, Ivan Trubetskoy, Gavriil Golovkin, and Nikita Zotov, as well as Peter himself. They later took the names of these figures, together with the title Sovereign Bastion. A Swedish attempt to seize the fortress in 1705 was repelled. The attack prompted additional northern defences, including the Crownwork, an external fortified position begun in 1705 and completed in 1708. It continued to be strengthened and altered throughout the eighteenth century.
Stone reconstruction and military purpose
Replacement of the earth-and-timber fortifications with stone and brick began at the Menshikov Bastion on 30 May 1706 and continued until about 1740. Because the ground was marshy, it was stabilised with large numbers of piles. The masonry bastions and curtain walls were raised to approximately 12 metres, and their casemates allowed guns to fire through openings in the walls. Although the fortress was designed to confront Sweden, its intended enemy was defeated during the Great Northern War before it played a direct role in a battle. Its military function consequently became largely symbolic, but it remained a garrison and arsenal complex.
Political prison and imperial authority
From the early eighteenth century the fortress also served as a place of political investigation and imprisonment. Prisoners were first held in wall casemates, followed by purpose-built facilities in the Alekseevsky Ravelin and Trubetskoy Bastion. Tsarevich Alexei, Peter I’s son, was among the earliest prisoners. He died in custody in 1718, in circumstances described either as a natural death or a secret killing.
After Elizabeth Petrovna came to the throne, political opponents including Ernst Johann von Biron, Heinrich Johann Friedrich Ostermann, Burkhard Christoph von Münnich, and K. L. Mengden were imprisoned in the fortress before being exiled to Siberia. Alexander Radishchev was held there in the 1790s before his death sentence was commuted to ten years’ exile in Siberia. In 1820 the full first Grenadier Company of the Semyonovsky Regiment was confined in the fortress after complaining about its colonel and military discipline. Around 3,000 Semyonovsky soldiers were imprisoned or punished, including through penal labour or transfer to distant fortresses.
Several hundred participants in the Decembrist uprising of 1825 were detained in the fortress. The Decembrists were officers and political reformers who led an unsuccessful revolt against the accession of Nicholas I. Five leaders, Mikhail Bestuzhev-Ryumin, Pavel Kakhovsky, Sergei Muravyov-Apostol, Pavel Pestel, and Kondraty Ryleyev, were executed on the eastern rampart of the Crownwork on 13 July 1826. A pink-granite obelisk was erected there in 1975.
Members of the Petrashevsky Circle, a nineteenth-century discussion group prosecuted for politically radical activity, were imprisoned on 23 April 1849 after an eight-month investigation. Fyodor Dostoevsky remained in the fortress from April to December that year, while Mikhail Bakunin was imprisoned there from 1851 to 1854. More than 300 students were detained after disturbances in 1861. Dmitry Pisarev and Nikolai Chernyshevsky were also imprisoned in the complex.
The Trubetskoy Bastion prison was rebuilt in 1870 to 1872. Before 1917 it held about 1,500 political prisoners, including members of the People’s Will, social democrats, social revolutionaries, and ministers of both the imperial and Provisional governments. During the Revolution of 1905 to 1907, Maxim Gorky, V. I. Semevsky, and N. F. Annensky were among those detained there.
Revolution and early Soviet use
In February 1917, soldiers of the Pavlovsky Regiment attacked the fortress and freed prisoners awaiting military tribunal. They were the last prisoners of the imperial regime. During the October Revolution later that year, the garrison supported the Bolsheviks, fired on the Winter Palace, and received ministers arrested from the Provisional Government.
From December 1917 the Trubetskoy Bastion prison and the fortress guardhouse formed part of the Cheka prison system. The Cheka was the first Soviet political-police organisation, established in 1917. Four grand dukes, Nicholas Mikhailovich, George Mikhailovich, Paul Alexandrovich, and Dmitry Konstantinovich, were executed in the fortress in January 1919. Executions during the Red Terror, the Bolshevik campaign of political repression during and after the Russian Civil War, took place near the left face of the Golovkin Bastion. Mass graves discovered in the late 2000s contained at least 160 victims, and the remains of Major General Alexander Rykov were the first to be identified.
The fortress became a branch of the State Museum of the Revolution in 1924 and has been a state museum since that year. A proposal to demolish it and build a stadium in 1925 was soon cancelled. From 1925 to 1933, the Ioannovsky Ravelin housed the Gas Dynamics Laboratory, an early Soviet research and design organisation concerned with rocket engines and the development of rocketry and space technology. The Museum of Cosmonautics and Rocket Technology opened there in 1973.
War damage, restoration, and museum use
During the Siege of Leningrad in the Second World War, German bombardment damaged the Golovkin Bastion, Ekaterininskaya Curtain, Ober-Officer House, Crownwork, and other structures. A heavy bomb exploded in the Crownwork courtyard on 11 September 1941 and seriously damaged the artillery museum. Mountaineers concealed the cathedral’s spire and cupolas beneath protective paint.
Restoration began in 1951 and included repairs to walls and bastions, renewal of the granite facing along the Neva, rehabilitation of the Trubetskoy prison, and reconstruction of lost details at the Petrovsky Gate. The cathedral interior and iconostasis were restored in 1956 to 1958. The fortress and its monument complex form part of the Historic Centre of Saint Petersburg, a UNESCO World Heritage property, and the site is also a federally significant cultural-heritage site in Russia. Since 1993 it has formed the Peter and Paul Fortress Historical and Cultural Museum-Reserve, administered as part of the State Museum of the History of Saint Petersburg.
The complex includes the State Museum of the History of Saint Petersburg, the Museum of Cosmonautics and Rocket Technology, the Museum of the History of Money, and the Military-Historical Museum of Artillery, Engineer and Signal Troops in the Crownwork. The Saint Petersburg Mint has operated within the fortress since 1724. A daily noon cannon shot began as an eighteenth-century time signal and became regular in 1873. It ceased between 1934 and 1953 and was restored in 1957. The fortress silhouette and the angel on the cathedral spire remain historical symbols of Saint Petersburg. A bronze statue of Peter I by Mikhail Shemyakin was installed on the central avenue in 1991. Its deliberately disproportionate body provoked public debate and later acquired a reputation as a city good-luck symbol.
Remains
The fortress occupies Hare Island, a low, marshy island that was frequently flooded before its fortification. The island covers about 28 hectares and measures approximately 0.9 kilometres from end to end and 0.5 kilometres across. Its Finnish-derived name means “Rabbit Island,” while seventeenth-century Swedish records called it Lust-Eiland, or “Merry Island.” The stone fortress forms an irregular hexagon. Six bastions, Sovereign, Menshikov, Golovkin, Zotov, Trubetskoy, and Naryshkin, are joined by six curtain walls, Petrovskaya, Nevskaya, Ekaterininskaya, Vasilievskaya, Nikolskaya, and Crownwork.
Walls, bastions, and gates
Sovereign Bastion and Petrovskaya Curtain
The original ramparts used logs and earth covered with turf. By autumn 1703 the six bastions carried more than 120 guns, including 58 on the Sovereign Bastion and 52 each on the Trubetskoy and Naryshkin bastions. Lowered flanks increased the intensity of defensive fire. The Sovereign Bastion was rebuilt in stone and brick from 1717 to 1732, faced with granite in 1782 to 1784, and changed from two-storey to one-storey casemates between 1834 and 1860. Its enclosed chambers now contain the Potern and Casemate exhibition.
The Petrovskaya Curtain, between the Sovereign and Menshikov bastions, contains 21 one-storey casemates. These rooms formerly accommodated engineering, invalid, and artillery companies, stores for food and construction materials, officers’ quarters, and arrest rooms. The curtain now contains the entrance to the Sovereign Bastion potern exhibition.
Nevskaya Curtain and Naryshkin Bastion
The Nevskaya Curtain links the Sovereign and Naryshkin bastions. Its former living quarters and workshops were later used by a military-orphan department, a hospital for military prisoners, and military units. The premises now contain the Historical Graphics Workshop and temporary exhibitions.
The Naryshkin Bastion was built in stone from 1725 to 1728 to designs by Domenico Trezzini and Burkhard Christoph von Münnich. Its side facing the Neva received granite cladding in 1779 to 1780. Former Mint casemates, cells used during the Decembrist investigation, and later barracks occupy the bastion. Its Flag Tower, built from 1731 to 1733, held fortress flags and gate keys. The flagstaff displayed the daily naval jack and, on ceremonial occasions, the imperial standard. The noon cannon shot is still fired from this bastion.
Neva Gate and Commandant’s Pier
The Neva Gate first appeared in the 1710s. Its inner facade received a portico with paired pilasters and military decoration in 1747 to 1748, while Nikolai Lvov rebuilt the outer facade in a classical style from 1784 to 1787. An anchor and crossed palm branches decorate the pediment. Plaques below the arch record water levels reached in the floods of 1752, 1777, 1788, 1824, 1924, and 1975.
The Commandant’s Pier began as a wooden landing stage in the first third of the eighteenth century and was rebuilt in stone from 1774 to 1777. Its granite landing is connected to the bank by a three-span arched bridge. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, prisoners condemned to death were transported from the pier.
Ekaterininskaya Curtain and Trubetskoy Bastion
The Ekaterininskaya Curtain lies between the Naryshkin and Trubetskoy bastions. Its 22 one-storey casemates have a granite-clad Neva facade dating from 1783 to 1786. The casemates formerly belonged to the Mint and later held military prisoners. Nearby rooms were used for visits and interrogations, while other cells held condemned prisoners.
The Trubetskoy Bastion has a granite-clad Neva facade from 1781 to 1785. Its early eighteenth-century casemates served first as torture and detention chambers and later as Mint premises. From 1870 to 1872 they were rebuilt as a political prison with two floors, 69 solitary cells, two punishment cells, and a bathhouse. The prison now contains a museum exhibition.
Vasilievskaya Curtain and Vasilievsky Gate
The Vasilievskaya Curtain, between the Trubetskoy and Zotov bastions, contains 14 one-storey casemates. A canal beside it was filled in 1882. The rooms served as housing for prison supervisors, stores, detention rooms, and garrison barracks. The Vasilievsky Gate was built in stone through the curtain and received a facade with paired pilasters and a triangular pediment in 1792 to 1794.
Zotov, Nikolskaya, and Golovkin defences
The Zotov Bastion contains a stone gun ramp from 1752. Its outer walls were rebuilt in brick and plastered to imitate granite in 1832 to 1834. The casemates held stores, the offices of the Garrison and Secret Chancelleries, solitary cells, archives, a forge, engineering workshops, and artillery stores. They now contain the Museum of the History of Money.
The Nikolskaya Curtain, between the Zotov and Golovkin bastions, has 18 two-storey casemates. It formerly held artillery-company stores and barracks, a guardroom, and detention rooms for Decembrists and members of the Petrashevsky Circle. Its western side is used by the Mint and contains the Mint Numismatic Salon. The Nikolsky Gate was built in stone in 1729. Four-column porticos were added to its facades in 1792 to 1793, and the passage was widened and remodelled in neo-Renaissance forms in 1884.
The Golovkin Bastion has blind facades without loopholes, a concealed passage to the Crownwork Channel, two powder magazines, and two-storey defensive casemates. Its chambers later served for solitary detention, and the bastion is now used by the Mint. Within it stands the Annensky Cavalier, a raised artillery structure built in stone from 1731 to 1733 to provide additional fire over the Crownwork. It was remodelled in 1836 to 1837 with a new decorative facade and pitched iron roof, then used for military trophies and artillery. It now forms part of the Museum of the History of Money.
Crownwork and Menshikov Bastion
The Crownwork Curtain, between the Golovkin and Menshikov bastions, has 21 one-storey casemates. These housed invalid and artillery companies and infantry battalions, as well as a guardroom and cells for leading Decembrists awaiting execution. The curtain is now used by the Mint. The Crownwork Gate was built in stone in 1709, remodelled as a portal with a keystone in 1829, and widened in 1872.
The Menshikov Bastion has a stone gun ramp dating from 1752 and a former powder magazine. Its casemates served the Secret Chancellery as detention and torture chambers before becoming stores, a forge, workshops, and garrison barracks. They now contain the Keramaks museum of architectural and artistic ceramics.
Outer fortifications, bridges, and waterworks
The Alekseevsky Ravelin is a triangular external fortification built from 1733 to 1740 under Burkhard Christoph von Münnich to cover the Vasilievskaya Curtain. Its Neva facade was faced with granite from 1787 to 1797. A wooden prison built in 1769 was replaced in 1797 by the stone Secret House, which contained 20 solitary cells. The prison was demolished in 1893 and replaced by a War Ministry archive building with two service wings.
The Ioannovsky Ravelin covers the Petrovskaya Curtain and Petrovsky Gate. It was rebuilt in stone from 1731 to 1740 under Münnich, and its Neva facade received granite cladding in 1778. The ravelin contains barracks, a guardroom, the Ioannovsky Gate, and former Gas Dynamics Laboratory premises, now occupied by the Museum of Cosmonautics and Rocket Technology.
Four semicontreguards covered the outer faces of the corner bastions. These massive U-shaped works contained earth-filled interiors, raised gun platforms, ramps, open firing openings, small internal rooms, guard turrets, and connecting walls and dams. Most lost their original earth filling and traverses during the later nineteenth century, and several were subsequently occupied by administrative, residential, and storage buildings.
Four water-control dams regulated the level of water in the fortress ditches and prevented enemy boats from entering. Three had water gates protected by iron grilles and small turrets, while the fourth, near the Zotov Bastion, had a gated passage for small boats. The southern dams were faced with granite in 1787, and the northern dams were surfaced with stone slabs in 1794. Some were dismantled during construction of the permanent Trinity Bridge from 1889 to 1892 and later restored. The western ditch was filled in 1893.
The Crownwork north of the fortress began as an earthwork external defence between 1705 and 1709. It contained shipyards, regimental and artillery stores, supply yards, and garrison barracks. A three-storey horseshoe-shaped fort was built from 1851 to 1860 to designs by P. I. Tamansky, with artillery levels and a small-arms level. After losing its defensive purpose, it became an arsenal and later housed the Artillery Museum, now the Military-Historical Museum of Artillery, Engineer and Signal Troops.
The Ioannovsky Bridge connects the Ioannovsky Gate with the Crownwork Embankment across the Crownwork Strait. The present seven-span wooden bridge dates from a 1951 reconstruction and measures 74.66 metres long and 10.54 metres wide. It has a metal superstructure on wooden river supports, stone arcades, and cast-iron railings and lamp standards added in 1953. The Crownwork Bridge is a nine-span wooden road bridge built in 1938. It measures 57.5 metres long and 8.8 metres wide and has wooden pile foundations, metal spans, a plank roadway and sidewalks, and wooden railings. The Western and Eastern Artillery Bridges are reinforced-concrete structures built from 1976 and faced with granite in the manner of eighteenth-century granite bridges.
Cathedral and imperial burial buildings
Peter and Paul Cathedral
The Peter and Paul Cathedral was built in stone from 1712 to 1733 to Domenico Trezzini’s design, replacing a wooden church erected in 1703. It is an early Russian Baroque building with a three-tier bell tower and a gilded spire approximately 122.5 metres high. A cross and angel crown the spire. Fire destroyed the wooden spire, roof, and upper bell-tower levels in 1756. The tower was rebuilt by 1780, Dutch-made chimes were installed, and the wooden spire components were replaced with a metal structure in 1857 to 1858. The angel was removed and restored from 1991 to 1995, and defects in that restoration were corrected in 2002.
Romanov burials began in the cathedral in 1708. Peter I was temporarily placed in a wooden chapel in 1725 and reburied near the iconostasis in 1731. The cathedral contains the burials of the Russian emperors and empresses, except Ivan VI and Peter II. Nicholas II, members of his family, and servants were interred in the Catherine Chapel in 1998. Since 1918 the cathedral has had no church services, and it is administered by the State Museum of the History of Saint Petersburg.
Grand Ducal Burial Vault
The Grand Ducal Burial Vault was built from 1896 to 1908 by David Grimm, Alexander Tomishko, and Leon Benois. A covered passage connects it to the cathedral. Thirteen members of the imperial family were buried there between 1908 and 1916, and later burials and reburials brought the total to 17 graves.
Civil, administrative, and industrial buildings
Boathouse and Mint
The Boathouse was built from 1762 to 1765 by Alexander Whist to house Peter I’s boat, known as the “Grandfather of the Russian Fleet.” Its facade represents a transition from Baroque to classical design, and a roof statue represents Navigation. The original boat remained there from 1767 to 1931 and is now in the Central Naval Museum. An exact copy has been displayed in the Boathouse since 1997.
The Mint has operated in the fortress since 1724. Its main building was constructed in strict classical style by A. Porto from 1800 to 1805. Additional production buildings were added in the 1830s and 1840s and enclosed by a stone wall. The Mint continues to produce coins, state decorations, medals, and commemorative signs.
Commandant’s House and Engineering House
The Commandant’s House was built from 1743 to 1746 to designs by H. de Marin and enlarged in 1750. It contained the commandant’s residence, offices, reception rooms, investigation rooms, a domestic chapel, stables, a laundry, a kitchen, and servants’ rooms. Trials of Decembrists, Petrashevsky Circle members, and populists were held in the commandant’s apartment. The building also housed the field headquarters of the Petrograd Military Revolutionary Committee on 25 and 26 October 1917. Its courtyard was covered by a glass roof in 2003, and it now contains a permanent museum exhibition.
The Engineering House was built in 1748 to 1749 in Baroque style. Its buildings form a quadrangular courtyard with two gates and formerly housed a drawing workshop, an engineering storehouse, archives, and living quarters. The complex now contains exhibition halls.
Guardhouse, Artillery Arsenal, and Ober-Officer House
The Guardhouse was built in 1748 to 1749 for the main garrison guard and for detaining officers and lower ranks. A second floor and classical portico were added in 1906 to 1907. The building now houses the museum administration.
The Artillery Arsenal was built near the Petrovsky Gate from 1801 to 1802 for weapons and military stores. It later served as a fire station and winter training arena. From 1941 to 1945 it contained workshops repairing vehicles used on the Road of Life. It now houses a waxwork museum.
The Ober-Officer House was built from 1900 to 1905 in an early classical style beside the Grand Ducal Burial Vault. It held the cathedral archive, library, sacristy, and accommodation for clergy and choir members. A bomb damaged it in 1942, and it was restored in 1952. Other nineteenth- and early twentieth-century service, residential, archival, Mint, and military buildings include the Officers’ Assembly and Staff-Officer House, House of Reserve Funds, Staff-Officer Wing, Plats-Major House, Commandant’s Office, and former War Ministry archive building. Their uses included military administration, housing, archives, telegraph service, stores, workshops, and Mint operations.
Petrovsky Gate and later restoration
The Petrovsky Gate is the principal ceremonial entrance. Built in 1703, it received a stone structure by 1717. Domenico Trezzini designed its outer facade in 1708 in the Baroque style, commemorating Russian victories over Sweden in the Great Northern War. Niches contain bronze figures of Courage and Prudence by Nicolas Pinault. A relief of Saint Peter overthrowing Simon Magus decorates the arch, while a 1,096-kilogram lead imperial double-headed eagle was installed above it in 1720.
The fortress’s present fabric reflects extensive repairs and restoration after 1951. Work included repairs to granite and brick walls, reconstruction of the cathedral interior and iconostasis, restoration of the Petrovsky Gate and major facades, and recreation of 180 cast-iron exterior lamps. These included nine wall lamps and 50 decorative lamps along the central avenue and Cathedral Square.
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