If We Look From the Viewpoint of Art History: From St. Petersburg Travel in 2013 (Peter and Paul Fortress)

The Peter and Paul Fortress is a vast historical complex, a branch of the State Museum of the History of St. Petersburg, located on a natural island in the heart of the city. The centre and architectural highlight of the citadel is the SS Peter and Paul Cathedral, the burial vault of the Romanov House, the city's highest structure until the middle of the 20th century.

History

The fortress founded by Peter the Great at the begging of May in 1703, during the Northern War. Right before this event on 1 May 1703, the Russians capture the Swedish fortress of Nyenskansk situated not far from the place where the Neva empties its waters into the Gulf of Finland. After that the Tsar Summoned a Military council that took a decision to lay the foundation of a new fortress in the estuary of the Neva. The layout of the 6 bastion citadel was evidently worked out by the Saxonian Wilhelm Adam Kirchenstein, with the assistance of Peter the Great himself and the French Joseph Gaspard Lambert de Guerin. The earliest bastion and curtain walls were made in wood and earth.

But as early as 1706 they began to be replaced by stone and brick on pole foundation to a design by and under the supervision of Domenico Trezzini. The reconstruction was completed by the 1710s. The Peter Gate was built to decorate the main entrance.

In 1712 the SS Peter and Paul Cathedral was founded in the fortress to be consecrated in 1733. In 1731-40 on the side of main gates- both western and eastern ones- were erected the Ioannovsky and Alexeyevsky Ravelins. In the 1770s and 1780s the fronts of the fortress on the Neva side were faced with granite.

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The SS Peter and Paul Cathedral

The SS Peter and Paul Cathedral designed by Domenico Trezzini, is a massive, simple in layout, but beautiful basilica (or, to be more exact, a kyriakon - a hall - type church) with a tall bell - tower crowned by a no less impressive spire. Its history goes back to the wooden church of 1704, around which were laid the foundations of a new cathedral in 1712. The building was completed in 1733. The main decoration of its interior became a luxurious carved and gilded iconostasis.

In 1857-58 the worn-out Woden structures of the spire of the bell- tower were replaced by metal ones and as a result the building grew up.

The Cathedral began to function as a royal burial vault even before the completion of construction work, succeeding the cathedral of the Assumption in the Moscow Kremlin. The first royal persons buried there were Peter the Great's children and Princess Charlotte, the consort of Tsarevich Alexis. Today there are 48 burials in the cathedral, including the sarcophagus of Peter the Great himself as well the tomb of the last Russian Tsar Nicholas II, and his relations and associates buried in the St. Catherine's Chapel on 17 July 1998.