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85-527: Described as a famous equilibrist, Michael Maddox arrived first in Russia in 1766 as the manager of a museum of 'mechanical and physical representations', visiting both St Petersburg and Moscow. Leaving Russia he travelled to Madrid with his museum, and spent time in London in the ensuing decade. It is unclear whether he was related to Anthony Maddox, the successful slack-wire and theatre performer who drowned on

170-727: A UNESCO World Heritage Site . Saint Petersburg is home to the Hermitage , one of the largest art museums in the world, the Lakhta Center , the tallest skyscraper in Europe , and was one of the host cities of the 2018 FIFA World Cup and the UEFA Euro 2020 . The name day of Peter I falls on 29 June, when the Russian Orthodox Church observes the memory of apostles Peter and Paul . The consecration of

255-536: A historically strategic port , it is governed as a federal city . The city was founded by Tsar Peter the Great on 27 May 1703 on the site of a captured Swedish fortress , and was named after the apostle Saint Peter . In Russia , Saint Petersburg is historically and culturally associated with the birth of the Russian Empire and Russia's entry into modern history as a European great power . It served as

340-695: A capital of the Tsardom of Russia , and the subsequent Russian Empire, from 1712 to 1918 (being replaced by Moscow for a short period of time between 1728 and 1730). After the October Revolution in 1917, the Bolsheviks moved their government to Moscow. The city was renamed Leningrad after Lenin's death in 1924. It was the site of the siege of Leningrad during the Second World War , the most lethal siege in history. In June 1991, only

425-633: A few months before the Belovezha Accords and the dissolution of the USSR , voters supported restoring the city's original appellation in a city-wide referendum . As Russia's cultural centre, Saint Petersburg received over 15 million tourists in 2018. It is considered an important economic, scientific, and tourism centre of Russia and Europe. In modern times, the city has the nickname of being "the Northern Capital of Russia" and

510-532: A fortress at the mouth of the Neva River in 1611, which was later called Ingermanland . The small town of Nyen grew up around the fort. Before the 17th century, this area was inhabited by Finnic Izhorians and Votians . The Ingrian Finns moved to the region from the provinces of Karelia and Savonia during the Swedish rule. There was also some Estonian , Karelian , Russian and German population in

595-883: A life-long pension of 3,000 roubles for his contribution to the creation of Moscow theatre. The theatre was operational until 1805, when it burned down just before a performance of Ferdinand Kauer 's Dneprovskaya Rusalka . It was replaced by the Bolshoi Theatre on the same site. [REDACTED] a. Petrovsky Theatre, including the extension which contained a rotunda. [REDACTED] [REDACTED] b. Interior of Rotunda/Masquerade hall. c. Interior of Theatre/Opera house [REDACTED] [REDACTED] d. Relative size and situation of Petrovsky theatre and Bolshoi. e. Plan of 2nd floor with rotunda and theatre. The Maddox troupe delivered 425 performances of drama, ballet and opera during this time. These included more than 100 different operas, mainly of

680-496: A new general plan was outlined, whereby the city should expand to the south. Constructivism was rejected in favour of a more pompous Stalinist architecture . Moving the city centre further from the border with Finland, Stalin adopted a plan to build a new city hall with a huge adjacent square at the southern end of Moskovsky Prospekt , designated as the new main street of Leningrad. After the Winter (Soviet-Finnish) war in 1939–1940,

765-591: A new plan in 1737. The city was divided into five boroughs, and the city centre was moved to the Admiralty borough, on the east bank between the Neva and Fontanka . It developed along three radial streets, which meet at the Admiralty building and are now known as Nevsky Prospect (which is considered the main street of the city), Gorokhovaya Street and Voznesensky Avenue . Baroque architecture became dominant in

850-517: A rectangular grid of canals. The project was not completed but is evident in the layout of the streets. In 1716, Peter the Great appointed Frenchman Jean-Baptiste Alexandre Le Blond as the chief architect of Saint Petersburg. The style of Petrine Baroque , developed by Trezzini and other architects and exemplified by such buildings as the Menshikov Palace , Kunstkamera , Peter and Paul Cathedral , Twelve Collegia , became prominent in

935-639: A sea voyage to Dublin in 1758 along with Theophilus Cibber . There exists a possibility of confusion between the two with regard to references to equilibrism . However, an anecdote, submitted by one C. J. Harford, of Stapleton, Bristol, originally published in Felix Farley's "Bristol Journal", and widely repeated in the English press in the 1820s, talks of Harford having encountered a man named Maddox in Moscow in 1786. That tale claimed that this "Mr Maddox"

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1020-494: A tower clock for Empress Catherine II of Russia , which is currently displayed in the Kremlin Armoury in Moscow. He married a German woman from an aristocratic family and fathered eleven children, one of them the adventurer Roman Medoks. His wife survived him and continued with ownership of some theatrical buildings. The suggestions that he was a Professor of Mathematics from Oxford University and that he had tutored

1105-498: Is combined with the city's Russian heritage. Another nickname of Saint Petersburg is "The City of the White Nights" because of a natural phenomenon which arises due to the closeness to the polar region and ensures that in summer the night skies of the city do not get completely dark for a month. The city is also often called the "Northern Palmyra ", due to its extravagant architecture. Swedish colonists built Nyenskans ,

1190-1094: Is home to notable federal government bodies such as the Constitutional Court of Russia and the Heraldic Council of the President of the Russian Federation . It is also a seat for the National Library of Russia and a planned location for the Supreme Court of Russia , as well as the home to the headquarters of the Russian Navy , and the Leningrad Military District of the Russian Armed Forces . The Historic Centre of Saint Petersburg and Related Groups of Monuments constitute

1275-524: Is said that the study of the score of one of Pierre-Alexandre Monsigny 's operas, lent to him by a secretary of the French embassy in Rome, decided Grétry to devote himself to French comic opera. On New Year's Day 1767 he accordingly left Rome, and after a short stay at Geneva (where he made the acquaintance of Voltaire , and produced another operetta) went to Paris. There for two years he had to contend with

1360-448: Is still named Leningrad . Having passed the role of capital to Petersburg, Moscow never relinquished the title of "capital", being called pervoprestolnaya ('first throned') for 200 years. An equivalent name for Petersburg, the "Northern Capital", has re-entered usage today since several federal institutions were recently moved from Moscow to Saint Petersburg. Solemn descriptive names like "the city of three revolutions" and "the cradle of

1445-652: Is Αγία Πετρούπολη, Agia Petroupoli ). Saint Petersburg has been traditionally called the "Window to Europe" and the "Window to the West" by the Russians. The city is the northernmost metropolis with more than 1 million people in the world, and is also often described as the " Venice of the North" or the "Russian Venice" due to its many water corridors, as the city is built on swamp and water. Furthermore, it has strongly Western European-inspired architecture and culture, which

1530-563: The Collège de Liège . Here Grétry resided for five years, studiously employed in completing his musical education under Giovanni Battista Casali . His proficiency in harmony and counterpoint was, however, according to his own confession, at all times very moderate. His first great success was achieved by La vendemmiatrice , an Italian intermezzo or operetta , composed for the Aliberti theatre in Rome and received with universal applause. It

1615-704: The Gold Star sign was installed in April 1985. In October 1946 some territories along the northern coast of the Gulf of Finland , which had been annexed into the USSR from Finland in 1940 under the peace treaty following the Winter War , were transferred from Leningrad Oblast to Leningrad and divided into Sestroretsky District and Kurortny District . These included the town of Terijoki (renamed Zelenogorsk in 1948). Leningrad and many of its suburbs were rebuilt over

1700-618: The Great Northern War , Peter the Great captured Nyenskans and soon replaced the fortress. On 27 May [ O.S. 16 May] 1703, closer to the estuary (5 km (3 mi) inland from the gulf ), on Zayachy (Hare) Island , he laid down the Peter and Paul Fortress , which became the first brick and stone building of the new city. The city was built by conscripted peasants from all over Russia; in some years several Swedish prisoners of war were also involved under

1785-489: The Haymarket Theatre , London, where it is said that in 1770 his were the most prosperous entertainments ever carried on in that house. His profits in one season are stated to have amounted to £11,000, £2,500 more than David Garrick 's a few years earlier. Urusov had been granted a ten-year licence for theatrical and other performances. For four years they enjoyed success in a wooden theatre at Znamenka Street ,

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1870-530: The Leningrad Affair (1949–1952), a notable event in the postwar political struggle in the USSR . It was a product of rivalry between Stalin's potential successors where one side was represented by the leaders of the city Communist Party organization – the second most significant one in the country after Moscow. The entire elite leadership of Leningrad was destroyed, including the former mayor Kuznetsov ,

1955-705: The Narva Triumphal Arch . In 1825, the suppressed Decembrist revolt against Nicholas I took place on the Senate Square in the city, a day after Nicholas assumed the throne. By the 1840s, neoclassical architecture had given way to various romanticist styles, which dominated until the 1890s, represented by such architects as Andrei Stackenschneider ( Mariinsky Palace , Beloselsky-Belozersky Palace , Nicholas Palace , New Michael Palace ) and Konstantin Thon ( Moskovsky railway station ). With

2040-556: The October Revolution , which led to the end of the social-democratic provisional government , the transfer of all political power to the Soviets , and the rise of the Communist Party . After that the city acquired a new descriptive name, "the city of three revolutions", referring to the three major developments in the political history of Russia of the early 20th century. In September and October 1917, German troops invaded

2125-530: The October revolution " used in the Soviet era are reminders of the pivotal events in national history that occurred here. Petropolis is a translation of a city name to Greek, and is also a kind of descriptive name: Πέτρ- is a Greek root for 'stone', so the "city from stone" emphasizes the material that had been forcibly made obligatory for construction from the first years of the city (a modern Greek translation

2210-611: The River Neva , at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea . The city had a population of 5,601,911 residents as of 2021, with more than 6.4 million people living in the metropolitan area . Saint Petersburg is the fourth-most populous city in Europe, the most populous city on the Baltic Sea, and the world's northernmost city of more than 1 million residents. As the former capital of Imperial Russia , and

2295-534: The Tsarevich Pavel prior to moving to Moscow have not been substantiated. Alexander Chayanov , whose wife Olga wrote a book on the history of the Maddox Theatre, set a portion of his Gothic tale "Venediktov" in the theatre. St Petersburg Saint Petersburg , formerly known as Petrograd and later Leningrad , is the second-largest city in Russia after Moscow . It is situated on

2380-619: The West Estonian archipelago and threatened Petrograd with bombardment and invasion. On 12 March 1918, Lenin transferred the government of Soviet Russia to Moscow, to keep it away from the state border. During the Russian Civil War , in mid-1919 Russian anti-communist forces with the help of Estonians attempted to capture the city, but Leon Trotsky mobilized the army and forced them to retreat back to Estonia . On 26 January 1924, five days after Lenin's death, Petrograd

2465-581: The Znamensky Theatre , before it burnt down in early 1780. Maddox then raised enough credit to buy his share of the company from Prince Urusov and employ architect Christian Rosberg the same year to construct a new brick and stone building that faced Petrovka Street . It thus became known as the Petrovsky Theatre. The theatre had four storeys of boxes and two spacious galleries. The pit had two series of benches, with enclosed seats at

2550-466: The emancipation of the serfs undertaken by Alexander II in 1861 and an Industrial Revolution , the influx of former peasants into the capital increased greatly. Poor boroughs spontaneously developed on the outskirts of the city. Saint Petersburg surpassed Moscow in population and industrial growth; it became one of the largest industrial cities in Europe, with a major naval base (in Kronstadt ),

2635-463: The "tuba curva", an instrument that existed from Roman times as the cornu . He used the tuba curva in music that he composed for the funeral of Voltaire . His opera-ballet La caravane du Caire , with modest turquerie exoticism in harp and triangle accompaniment, is a rescue adventure along the lines of Die Entführung aus dem Serail ; premiered at Fontainebleau in 1783, it remained in the French repertory for fifty years. Grétry also made use of

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2720-435: The 1920s and 1930s, the poor outskirts were reconstructed into regularly planned boroughs . Constructivist architecture flourished around that time. Housing became a government-provided amenity ; many "bourgeois" apartments were so large that numerous families were assigned to what were called "communal" apartments ( kommunalkas ). By the 1930s, 68% of the population lived in such housing under very poor conditions. In 1935,

2805-651: The Axis invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. The siege lasted 872 days, or almost two and a half years, from 8 September 1941 to 27 January 1944. The Siege of Leningrad proved one of the longest, most destructive, and most lethal sieges of a major city in modern history . It isolated the city from food supplies except those provided through the Road of Life across Lake Ladoga , which could not make it through until

2890-656: The German words Sankt and Burg . In March 1917, during the February Revolution Nicholas II abdicated for himself and on behalf of his son, ending the Russian monarchy and over three hundred years of Romanov dynastic rule . On 7 November [ O.S. 25 October] 1917, the Bolsheviks , led by Vladimir Lenin , stormed the Winter Palace in an event known thereafter as

2975-650: The Hermitage in Montmorency , formerly the house of Rousseau . Fifteen years after his death Grétry's heart was transferred to his birthplace, permission having been obtained after a protracted lawsuit. In 1842 a large bronze statue of the composer was set up at Liège. His heart remains in it, while his body is buried in Paris at the Père Lachaise Cemetery . During his life, a commemorative statue

3060-608: The Neva River, and a seaport on the Baltic. The names of Saints Peter and Paul , bestowed upon the original city's citadel and its cathedral (from 1725 – a burial vault of Russian emperors) coincidentally were the names of the first two assassinated Russian emperors, Peter III (1762, supposedly killed in a conspiracy led by his wife, Catherine the Great ) and Paul I (1801, Nikolay Alexandrovich Zubov and other conspirators who brought to power Alexander I ,

3145-665: The Soviet era, many historic architectural monuments of the previous centuries were destroyed by the new regime for ideological reasons. While that mainly concerned churches and cathedrals, some other buildings were also demolished. On 1 December 1934, Sergey Kirov , the Bolshevik leader of Leningrad, was assassinated under suspicious circumstances, which became the pretext for the Great Purge . In Leningrad, approximately 40,000 were executed during Stalin's purges. During World War II, German forces besieged Leningrad following

3230-642: The Soviet–Finnish border moved northwards. Nevsky Prospekt with Palace Square maintained the functions and the role of a city centre. In December 1931, Leningrad was administratively separated from Leningrad Oblast . At that time it included the Leningrad Suburban District, some parts of which were transferred back to Leningrad Oblast in 1936 and turned into Vsevolozhsky District , Krasnoselsky District , Pargolovsky District and Slutsky District (renamed Pavlovsky District in 1944). During

3315-463: The Winter Palace and prohibited spacing between buildings. During the reign of Catherine the Great in the 1760s–1780s, the banks of the Neva were lined with granite embankments. However, it was not until 1850 that the first permanent bridge across the Neva, Annunciation Bridge , was allowed to open. Before that, only pontoon bridges were allowed. Obvodny Canal (dug in 1769–1833) became

3400-564: The acting mayor Pyotr Sergeevich Popkov, and all their deputies; overall 23 leaders were sentenced to the death penalty, 181 to prison or exile (rehabilitated in 1954). About 2,000 ranking officials across the USSR were expelled from the party and the Komsomol and removed from leadership positions. The Leningrad Metro underground rapid transit system , designed before the war, opened in 1955 with its first eight stations decorated with marble and bronze . However, after Stalin's death in 1953,

3485-468: The area. At the end of the 17th century, Peter the Great, who was interested in seafaring and maritime affairs, wanted Russia to gain a seaport to trade with the rest of Europe. He needed a better seaport than the country's main one at the time, Arkhangelsk , which was on the White Sea in the far north and closed to shipping during the winter. On 12 May [ O.S. 1 May] 1703, during

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3570-466: The banquet – "fatal as that of Thyestes ," remarks Carlyle – given by the bodyguard to the officers of the Versailles garrison on 3 October 1789. La Marseillaise not long afterwards became the reply of the people to the expression of loyalty borrowed from Grétry's opera. Richard Cœur de Lion was translated and adapted for the English stage by John Burgoyne . Grétry was the first to write for

3655-426: The city Menshikov is maybe also the author of the first nickname of Petersburg which he called Петри ( Petri ). It took some years until the known Russian spelling of this name finally settled. In 1740s Mikhail Lomonosov uses a derivative of Greek: Πετρόπολις (Петрополис, Petropolis ) in a Russified form Petropol ' (Петрополь). A combo Piterpol (Питерпол) also appears at this time. In any case, eventually

3740-689: The city architecture of the early 18th century. In 1724 the Academy of Sciences , University and Academic Gymnasium were established in Saint Petersburg by Peter the Great. In 1725, Peter died at age fifty-two. His endeavors to modernize Russia had been opposed by the Russian nobility . There were several attempts on his life and a treason case involving his son. In 1728, Peter II of Russia moved his seat back to Moscow. But four years later, in 1732, under Empress Anna of Russia , Saint Petersburg

3825-400: The city authorities arranged for the mayoral elections and a referendum upon the city's name, when the original name Saint Petersburg was restored. The turnout was 65%; 66.13% of the total count of votes went to Anatoly Sobchak , who became the first directly elected mayor of the city . Meanwhile, economic conditions started to deteriorate as the country tried to adapt to major changes. For

3910-496: The city authorities until December 2010, when after the statement of President Dmitry Medvedev , the city decided to find a more appropriate location for this project. In the same year, the new location for the project was relocated to Lakhta , a historical area northwest of the city centre, and the new project would be named Lakhta Center . Construction was approved by Gazprom and the city administration and commenced in 2012. The 462 m (1,516 ft) high Lakhta Center has become

3995-537: The city during the first sixty years, culminating in the Elizabethan Baroque, represented most notably by Italian Bartolomeo Rastrelli with such buildings as the Winter Palace . In the 1760s, Baroque architecture was succeeded by neoclassical architecture . Established in 1762, the Commission of Stone Buildings of Moscow and Saint Petersburg ruled that no structure in the city could be higher than

4080-470: The city was renamed Leningrad in January 1924. The referendum on restoring the historic name was held on 12 June 1991, with 55% of voters supporting " Saint Petersburg " and 43% supporting " Leningrad ". The turnout was 65% . Renaming the city Petrograd was not an option. This change officially took effect on 6 September 1991. Meanwhile, the oblast whose administrative center is also in Saint Petersburg

4165-459: The comic opera/ opéra comique type by composers such as Grétry , Dalayrac , Mehul , Paisiello , Philidor and Martin y Soler , as well as Russians such as Yevstigney Fomin and Vasily Pashkevich . The foreign operas were largely performed in Russian translations by Sergey Glinka , Platon Levshin , Ivan Dmitrievsky , and others. Three notable melodramas ( Fomin 's Orfeo and G. A. Benda 's Pygmalion and Medea & Jason ) were part of

4250-474: The delineation of character and in the expression of tender and typically French sentiment. The structure of his concerted pieces on the other hand is frequently flimsy, and his instrumentation so feeble that the orchestral parts of some of his works had to be rewritten by other composers, in order to make them acceptable to modern audiences. During the Revolution Grétry lost much of his property, but

4335-498: The difficulties attendant on poverty and obscurity. He was, however, not without friends, and by the intercession of Count Gustaf Philip Creutz , the Swedish ambassador, Grétry obtained a libretto from Jean-François Marmontel , which he set to music in less than six weeks, and which, on its performance in August 1768, met with unparalleled success. The name of the opera was Le Huron . Two others, Lucile and Le tableau parlant , soon followed, and thenceforth Grétry's position as

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4420-502: The first tallest skyscraper in Russia and Europe outside of Moscow. Gr%C3%A9try André Ernest Modeste Grétry ( French: [gʁɛtʁi] ; baptised 11 February 1741; died 24 September 1813) was a composer from the Prince-Bishopric of Liège (present-day Belgium ), who worked from 1767 onwards in France and took French nationality. He is most famous for his opéras comiques . His music influenced Mozart and Beethoven both of whom wrote variations on his works. He

4505-400: The first time since the 1940s, food rationing was introduced, and the city received humanitarian food aid from abroad. This dramatic time was depicted in photographic series of Russian photographer Alexey Titarenko . Economic conditions began to improve only at the beginning of the 21st century. In 1995, a northern section of the Kirovsko-Vyborgskaya Line of the Saint Petersburg Metro

4590-411: The head of the city administration . The title of the city head was changed from "mayor" to "governor". In 2000, Yakovlev won re-election. His second term expired in 2004; the long-awaited restoration of the broken subway connection was expected to finish by that time. But in 2003 Yakovlev suddenly resigned, leaving the governor's office to Valentina Matviyenko . The law on election of the City Governor

4675-414: The inexperienced and timid." From 1783, Maddox also created and ran a Vauxhall Gardens enterprise concurrently in the Moscow suburbs, where operas and plays were performed from mid-May to September. A long gallery led to a grand circular hall for dancing. From the dancing-hall there was a large area surrounded by a covered gallery, having in the middle an elevated platform for the orchestra. This gallery

4760-420: The lake froze. More than one million civilians were killed, mainly from starvation. There were incidents of cannibalism, with around 2,000 residents arrested for eating other people. Many others escaped or were evacuated, so the city became largely depopulated. On 1 May 1945 Joseph Stalin , in his Supreme Commander Order No. 20, named Leningrad, alongside Stalingrad , Sevastopol , and Odesa , hero cities of

4845-400: The leading composer of comic opera was safely established. Altogether he composed some fifty operas. His masterpieces are Zémire et Azor and Richard Coeur-de-lion —the first produced in 1771, the second in 1784. The latter in an indirect way became connected with a great historic event. In it occurs the celebrated romance, O Richard, O mon Roi, l'univers t'abandonne , which was sung at

4930-422: The mandolin in his compositions. Philip J. Bone speculated that Grétry was exposed to the instrument while in Italy, and said "he makes use of it upon various occasions, in this instance with a telling and marked impression." This instance was the serenade While all are sleeping from Grétry's opera L'amant jaloux . Bone called the serenade "a delicate accompaniment for two mandolins". The composer himself

5015-416: The original name, Sankt-Peterburg , was returned by citywide referendum. Today, in English the city is known as Saint Petersburg . Local residents often refer to the city by its shortened nickname, Piter (Russian: Питер , IPA: [ˈpʲitʲɪr] ). After the October Revolution the name Red Petrograd (Красный Петроград, Krasny Petrograd ) was often used in newspapers and other prints until

5100-432: The perceived ornamental excesses of the Stalinist architecture were abandoned. From the 1960s to the 1980s many new residential boroughs were built on the outskirts; while the functionalist apartment blocks were nearly identical to each other, many families moved there from kommunalkas in the city centre to live in separate apartments. On 12 June 1991 , simultaneously with the first Russian SFSR presidential elections ,

5185-441: The performance of an Italian opera company. Here he heard the operas of Baldassarre Galuppi , Giovanni Battista Pergolesi , and other masters; and the desire of completing his own studies in Italy was the immediate result. To find the necessary means he composed in 1759 a mass which he dedicated to the canons of the Liège Cathedral , and it was at the expense of Canon Hurley that he went to Italy in March 1759. In Rome he went to

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5270-421: The post-war decades, partially according to pre-war plans. The 1948 general plan for Leningrad featured radial urban development in the north as well as in the south. In 1953, Pavlovsky District in Leningrad Oblast was abolished, and parts of its territory, including Pavlovsk, merged with Leningrad. In 1954, the settlements Levashovo , Pargolovo and Pesochny merged with Leningrad. Leningrad gave its name to

5355-540: The preservation of its historical and architectural environment became controversial. After 2005, the demolition of older buildings in the historical centre was permitted. In 2006, Gazprom announced an ambitious project to erect a 403 m (1,322 ft) skyscraper (the Okhta Center ) opposite to Smolny , which could result in the loss of the unique line of Petersburg landscape. Urgent protests by citizens and prominent public figures of Russia against this project were not considered by Governor Valentina Matviyenko and

5440-418: The repertoire. Theatre productions in Russian translation included Shakespeare 's Romeo & Juliet and Voltaire 's Mahomet . The most successful works, however, were those of August von Kotzebue , such as Menschenhass und Reue , The Papagoy , and Armuth und Edelsinn . Masquerades for 1,500 people or more, where carnival costume was compulsory, were held in the mirror-bedecked rotunda. This part of

5525-415: The sides. The sumptuously decorated boxes were available to let at from three hundred to a thousand roubles and upwards. Admittance to the pit was one rouble. Maddox obtained a further ten-year licence from Moscow's Governor, Prince Dolgoruky-Krymsky , but financial difficulties meant that ownership of the theatre passed to the Office of Imperial Theatres in 1792. Empress Maria Feodorovna granted Maddox

5610-594: The small wooden church in their names (its construction began at the same time as the citadel) made them the heavenly patrons of the Peter and Paul Fortress , while Saint Peter at the same time became the eponym of the whole city. When in June 1703 Peter the Great renamed the site after Saint Peter, he did not issue a naming act that established an official spelling; even in his own letters he used diverse spellings, such as Санктьпетерсьбурк ( Sanktpetersburk ), emulating German Sankt Petersburg , and Сантпитербурх ( Santpiterburkh ), emulating Dutch Sint-Pietersburgh , as Peter

5695-442: The son of their victim). The third emperor's assassination took place in Saint Petersburg in 1881 when Alexander II was murdered by terrorists (see the Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood ). The Revolution of 1905 began in Saint Petersburg and spread rapidly into the provinces. On 1 September 1914, after the outbreak of World War I, the Imperial government renamed the city Petrograd , meaning "Peter's City", to remove

5780-455: The southern limit of the city. The most prominent neoclassical and Empire-style architects in Saint Petersburg included: In 1810, Alexander I established the first engineering higher education , the Saint Petersburg Main military engineering School in Saint Petersburg. Many monuments commemorate the Russian victory over Napoleonic France in the Patriotic War of 1812 , including the Alexander Column by Montferrand, erected in 1834, and

5865-412: The structure alone had cost fifty thousand roubles to construct. William Tooke in the chapter "Sketch of Mosco" (sic) from his History of Russia describes the audience in the pit of the theatre as "perhaps, in many respects, one of the most polite that can be anywhere seen. The ears are never rent with those noisy marks of disapprobation, which do not correct bad actors, and which distress and overpower

5950-417: The successive governments of France vied in favouring the composer, regardless of political differences. From the old court he received distinctions and rewards of all kinds; the republic made him an inspector of the conservatoire; Napoleon granted him the cross of the legion of honour and a pension. Grétry took students in opera composition, including his daughter Lucile and Caroline Wuiet . He died at

6035-407: The supervision of Alexander Menshikov . Tens of thousands of serfs died while building the city. Later, the city became the centre of the Saint Petersburg Governorate . Peter moved the capital from Moscow to Saint Petersburg in 1712, nine years before the Treaty of Nystad of 1721 ended the war. He referred to Saint Petersburg as the capital (or seat of government) as early as 1704. While the city

6120-449: The usage of prefix " Sankt- " ceased except for the formal official documents, where a three-letter abbreviation "СПб" ( SPb ) was very widely used as well. In the 1830s Alexander Pushkin translated the "foreign" city name of "Saint Petersburg" to the more Russian Petrograd (Russian: Петроград , IPA: [pʲɪtrɐˈgrat] ) in one of his poems. However, it was only on 31 August [ O.S. 18 August] 1914, after

6205-558: The war with Germany had begun, that Tsar Nicholas II renamed the city Petrograd in order to expunge the German words Sankt and Burg . Since the prefix "Saint" was omitted, this act also changed the eponym and the "patron" of the city from Saint Peter to Peter the Great, its founder. On 26 January 1924, shortly after the death of Vladimir Lenin , it was renamed to Leningrad (Russian: Ленинград , IPA: [lʲɪnʲɪnˈgrat] ), meaning 'Lenin City'. On 6 September 1991,

6290-715: The war. A law acknowledging the honorary title of "Hero City" passed on 8 May 1965 (the 20th anniversary of the victory in the Great Patriotic War), during the Brezhnev era . The Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR awarded Leningrad as a Hero City the Order of Lenin and the Gold Star medal "for the heroic resistance of the city and tenacity of the survivors of the Siege". The Hero-City Obelisk bearing

6375-537: Was again designated as the capital of the Russian Empire . It remained the seat of the Romanov dynasty and the Imperial Court of the Russian tsars , as well as the seat of the Russian government, for another 186 years until the communist revolution of 1917 . In 1736–1737 the city suffered from catastrophic fires. To rebuild the damaged boroughs, a committee under Burkhard Christoph von Münnich commissioned

6460-593: Was being built, Peter lived in a three-room log cabin with his wife Catherine and their children. During its first few years, the city developed around Trinity Square on the right bank of the Neva, near the Peter and Paul Fortress. However, Saint Petersburg soon started to be built out according to a plan. By 1716 the Swiss Italian Domenico Trezzini had elaborated a project whereby the city centre would be on Vasilyevsky Island and shaped by

6545-411: Was born at Liège , his father being a poor musician. He was a choirboy at the church of St. Denis (Liège) . In 1753 he became a pupil of Jean-Pantaléon Leclerc and later of the organist at St-Pierre de Liège, Nicolas Rennekin , for keyboard and composition and of Henri Moreau, music master at the collegiate church of St. Paul. But of greater importance was the practical tuition he received by attending

6630-530: Was changed, breaking the tradition of democratic election by universal suffrage that started in 1991. In 2006, the city legislature re-approved Matviyenko as governor. Residential building had intensified again; real-estate prices inflated greatly, which caused many new problems for the preservation of the historical part of the city. Although the central part of the city has a UNESCO designation (there are about 8,000 architectural monuments in Petersburg),

6715-524: Was chiefly used for promenading. Beyond this was a hall allotted to refreshments of all kinds. On the sides were billiards rooms. In the evenings the galleries were illuminated with coloured lamps, and on particular days fireworks displays were set off. It is likely that Maddox and his wife retained ownership of this after the Petrovsky was taken on by the Office of Imperial Theatres. Maddox manufactured

6800-400: Was cut off by underground flooding, creating a major obstacle to the city development for almost ten years. On 13 June 1996, Saint Petersburg, alongside Leningrad Oblast and Tver Oblast , signed a power-sharing agreement with the federal government, granting it autonomy. This agreement was abolished on 4 April 2002. In 1996, Vladimir Yakovlev defeated Anatoly Sobchak in the elections for

6885-402: Was influenced by the great events he witnessed, and the titles of some of his operas, such as La rosière républicaine and La fête de la raison , sufficiently indicate the epoch to which they belong; but they are mere pièces de circonstance , and the republican enthusiasm displayed is not genuine. Little more successful was Grétry in his dealings with classical subjects. His genuine power lay in

6970-612: Was multilingual and a Hollandophile. The name was later normalized and russified to Санкт-Петербург. A former spelling of the city's name in English was Saint Petersburgh . This spelling survives in the name of a street in the Bayswater district of London, near St Sophia's Cathedral , named after a visit by the Tsar to London in 1814. A 14 to 15-letter-long name, composed of the three roots , proved too cumbersome, and many shortened versions were used. The first General Governor of

7055-486: Was renamed Leningrad . Later many streets and other toponyms were renamed accordingly, with names in honour of communist figures replacing historic names given centuries before. The city has over 230 places associated with the life and activities of Lenin. Some of them were turned into museums, including the cruiser Aurora – a symbol of the October Revolution and the oldest ship in the Russian Navy . In

7140-508: Was still calling himself a trumpeter, of Bristol, when he wrote his will in 1799. This anecdote seems to support the idea that Michael Maddox was related to (and possibly the son of) Anthony ("Tom"?) Maddox. On returning to Russia before 1776, Michael Maddox was taken into partnership in the theatre company formed that year by the Moscow Prosecutor, Prince Pyotr Vasilyevich Urusov . Maddox had had an established record of success at

7225-562: Was the sole survivor of the sinking of a packet off Holyhead in 1757 [sic - the correct date is 1758] that had claimed the lives of "the famous Tom [sic] Maddox, the rope dancer" and the rest of his family, and that Maddox had subsequently been brought up by his uncle "Seward", trumpeter of Bristol. This uncle would almost certainly be Samuel Seward (c.1737-1810), who was later owner of the New Sadler's Wells Theatre in Cheltenham, and who

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