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78-557: Though located in St. Petersburg , the university is on a federal rather than local level and has partnerships with global oil, gas, and mining companies, as well as governments. Its museum is home to one of the world's finest collections of gems and mineral samples, and the university building is a Neoclassical masterpiece designed by Andrey Voronikhin . The university was first known as the Mining School (Горное училище) until 1804, when it became

156-696: 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

234-502: A church, dedicated to St. Macarius of Egypt, which first opened its doors in 1805. It was closed, along with other churches, by the Soviet government in 1918, and was used first as a cinema and then as a gym, which resulted in damage to the interior. However, in 1996 it was recognized once more as a church and restored fully and is now functional. The university was renamed Saint Petersburg State Mining University in 2011, and, after merging with

312-613: 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

390-521: 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

468-492: 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,

546-577: 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

624-557: 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

702-559: A struggle with Antaeus, who had defeated most of his previous opponents up to that point. In 1830 Pimenov fell out of favour with Tsar Nicholas I, seemingly over his sculptures to decorate the Narva Triumphal Arch , built in 1814 to mark the Russian victory over Napoleon, but most probably because of his portraits of the Tsar, which Nicholas did not take a liking to. Pimenov was dismissed by

780-402: A uniform worn by all staff and students. When it was first opened in the 1700s, students wore a double-breasted red uniform with a white collar and gold trimmings. The uniform was dropped for a number of years before being reintroduced in 2000 with the aim of reviving the traditions of Russia's first technical college. The Russian railways is another non-military organisation where staff still wear

858-448: A uniform. In 2013, Russia began issuing new sets of stamps showing uniforms, such as those of communications and post office workers, from the 1600s to the present. Russian mining engineers in general wore uniforms, seemingly as part of efforts to bring the profession closer to the military. One of the key achievements of the university's scientists has been the invention of techniques to drill through several miles of Antarctic ice to reach

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936-492: 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 ,

1014-532: 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 a capital of the Tsardom of Russia , and

1092-1023: 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

1170-610: Is recognised. Vladimir Litvinenko has been rector since 1994 and has close links to Vladimir Putin , who defended his doctoral thesis at the institute in 1996. Litvinenko oversaw Putin's work, which is alleged to include significant amounts of plagiarism and is speculated perhaps to have not even been written by Putin (i.e. that he paid somebody to write it for him). Litvinenko has been criticised for not spotting plagiarism. The list of University alumni includes specialists, who discovered open fields and projected productions. Such are geologists Alexander Karpinsky , Vladimir Obruchev ,

1248-448: 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

1326-639: 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

1404-519: 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 a historically strategic port , it

1482-685: 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

1560-606: 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

1638-510: The Kazan Cathedral  – inspired by St. Peter's Basilica in Rome ;– at Nevsky Prospect , as well as buildings at Paul I's estate at Pavlovsk Palace south of the city. he also remodelled the interiors of the baroque Stroganov Palace in neoclassical style. The design of the university building reflects the idea that mining is a harsh and difficult pursuit – as well as symbolising

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1716-518: 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 ,

1794-623: 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

1872-604: 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

1950-472: 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

2028-604: 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

2106-461: 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 ),

2184-551: The spandrels of the central arch. The main entablature breaks boldly forward over paired Composite columns that flank the opening and support colossal sculptures. Nike , the Goddess of Victory, surmounts the arch, in a triumphal car drawn by six horses, sculpted by Peter Clodt von Jürgensburg , instead of the traditional Quadriga . Neither the arch nor the Russian Admiralty were protected from artillery bombardments during

2262-705: The 1870s, becoming known as the G. V. Plekhanov Leningrad State Mining Institute and Technical University. Between 1958 and 1960, a branch of the institute was opened in Vorkuta, along with night schools in Slantsy, Monchegorsk, and Kirovsk. Since 1869 the institute has also been the headquarters of the Russian Mineralogical Society . During the Siege of Leningrad , the building was used as a manufacturing base for producing explosives and grenades. The university also houses

2340-435: 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,

2418-597: The 19th century. On the right-hand-side of the entrance to the university is the Hercules and Antaeus sculpture by Stepan Pimenov , one of the leading Russian sculptors of the early 19th century, who also created sculptural decorations for the Kazan Cathedral, the Admiralty, and many other palaces and monuments in St Petersburg, and who had worked closely with Demut-Malinovsky since 1802. The statue shows Hercules winning in

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2496-870: The All-Russian Research Institute of Geology and Mineral Resources of the World Ocean ( VNIIOkeangeologia ), the Institute of Geography in Moscow, the Limnological Institute in Irkutsk and the Laboratory for Glaciology and Environmental Geophysics in Grenoble, France. Lake Vostok is one of the world's most closely watched scientific projects, and the expertise of the Russian drillers, directed by Professor Vasiliev,

2574-633: 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

2652-629: 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

2730-683: The Mining Cadet Corps (Горный кадетский корпус); in 1833, it became the Institute of the Corps of Mining Engineers (Институт корпуса горных инженеров). Since 1866, it has been known as the Mining Institute (Горный институт). It is still widely known in Russia as Gorny , or 'Mining', referring to its previous name. During the Soviet period, it was renamed after Georgi Plekhanov , who attended the institute in

2808-598: 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 ,

2886-568: The North-West Open Technical University in 2012, it was known as the National Mineral Resources University. The university was renamed Saint Petersburg Mining University in 2016. The university is housed in a grand neoclassicist building with a 12-column portico on the banks of the Neva River on the south shore of Vasilievsky Island . It is the first building that can be seen from ships travelling into

2964-654: 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

3042-631: 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

3120-403: The Tsar and died three years later, at the age of 49. The two sculptures symbolise the earth, its power and wealth – Antaeus’ strength lay in his contact with Mother Earth, and Demut-Malinovsky’s Rape of Proserpina also shows a struggle – and the dynamism of each sculpture contrasts with the solidity of the large portico. Unusually for a non-military establishment, the university has

3198-456: 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

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3276-559: 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,

3354-463: 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

3432-426: 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

3510-671: 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

3588-400: 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

3666-496: 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

3744-407: 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

3822-399: The city from the Gulf of Finland , and is a prime example of the monumental neoclassicist style favoured in Imperial Russia in the early 1800s. Russian scholars call this architecture classicist, while in the west it is known as neoclassicist, because trends in architecture came to Russia later than in the West. Architect Andrey Voronikhin completed the building in 1806–11. He also designed

3900-415: 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

3978-421: The entry into the underground world of Pluto through the portico, decorated with 12 columns of the Doric order. On the left-hand side of the steps at the entrance to the university is a sculpture by Vasily Demut-Malinovsky , who designed decorations and sculptures for many of the city’s churches, palaces, and monuments. The Abduction of Proserpina depicts how the Roman goddess Proserpina is seized and taken to

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4056-406: The first tallest skyscraper in Russia and Europe outside of Moscow. Narva Triumphal Arch The Narva Triumphal Arch ( Russian : На́рвские триумфа́льные ворота , lit. Narvskie Triumfal'nyye vorota ) was erected in the vast Stachek Square (prior to 1923 also known as the Narva Square), Saint Petersburg , in 1814 to commemorate the Russian victory over Napoleon . The wooden structure

4134-400: 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

4212-411: The founder of the oil doctrine Ivan Gubkin , and many others. 59°55′45″N 30°16′10″E  /  59.92923°N 30.26945°E  / 59.92923; 30.26945 St. Petersburg Saint Petersburg , formerly known as Petrograd and later Leningrad , is the second-largest city in Russia after Moscow . It is situated on the River Neva , at the head of the Gulf of Finland on

4290-411: 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

4368-420: 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

4446-441: The material used was a weather-resistant plaster that was never intended to be permanent. Between 1827 and 1834 Vasily Stasov redesigned and rebuilt the gate in stone. A similar gate , also by Stasov, was erected on the road leading to Moscow . A sculptor Vasily Demut-Malinovsky was responsible for the arch's sculptural decor. As has been conventional since Imperial Roman times, sculptures of Pheme offering laurel wreaths fill

4524-416: 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

4602-432: 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 ,

4680-421: 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

4758-540: 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

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4836-594: 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

4914-442: 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

4992-455: 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

5070-442: The sub-glacial Lake Vostok . Professor Nikolai Vasiliev, head of the drilling department at the university, has led the drilling efforts, while scientific research into the layers of ice that cover the lake, the possibility of new forms of microbial life existing in the lake, and a host of other areas of research connected to the lake are based at the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute , the Petersburg Nuclear Physics Institute ,

5148-407: 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

5226-407: 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

5304-404: The underworld by Pluto and is after the original The Rape of Proserpina by Italian artist Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1621–22), which provided the inspiration for many artists. Its powerful forms and heavy proportions are determined by their position and function as a decoration of the huge portico, and the sculpture together with the portico are typical of Russian town planning in the beginning of

5382-449: 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

5460-507: 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,

5538-422: 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

5616-525: 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

5694-576: 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

5772-524: 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),

5850-543: Was constructed on the then highway to Narva with the purpose of greeting the soldiers who were returning from abroad after their victory over Napoleon. The architect of the original Narva triumphal arch was Giacomo Quarenghi . The program was meant to respond to the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel in Paris, originally erected to celebrate Napoleon's victory over the Allies at Austerlitz , but

5928-400: 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

6006-606: 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

6084-478: 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

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