Handpicked experience · St. Petersburg
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The fortress was built to hold the Neva against Sweden, was finished after the threat had gone, never fought at all — and spent the next two centuries as a political prison.
The exact spot and date a major European capital began
Military architecture that was obsolete before completion
Two centuries of political imprisonment behind a decorative façade
A daily ritual you can set your watch by
The burial place of a dynasty
Four hours through central St Petersburg with an English-speaking guide, built around a guided stop at the Peter and Paul Fortress on Hare Island, where the city began.
St Petersburg does not date itself from a village or a market that grew. It dates itself from the day in May 1703 when the first earthworks went up on this island.
The fortress came first and the city assembled itself around it, which is why the place has an origin story with a date attached rather than a gradual emergence. Everything else you will see today — the avenues, the embankments, the palaces — was built later, facing this.
The fortress was raised to hold the mouth of the Neva against Sweden, and by the time it was finished in stone the border had moved and the threat had gone. It never repelled an assault. It never fought at all.
A garrison with nothing to defend was given something else to hold, and for two centuries the Trubetskoy Bastion was one of the empire's most serious political prisons. Peter's own son Alexei died within these walls in 1718 after interrogation. Dostoevsky was held here in 1849 before his sentence. So were Bakunin, the Decembrists, Gorky and Trotsky, among a great many people whose names did not survive.
It is worth carrying that with you while you walk the grounds, because the fortress is a beautiful thing photographed from the river and a bleak one from the inside.
At twelve o'clock a cannon fires from the Naryshkin Bastion.
It began as a time signal in the nineteenth century, when the city needed a way to set its clocks, and it has been kept up as a daily ritual ever since. If your visit falls near noon you will hear it, and it is a great deal louder than people expect — there is no warning, and small children and dogs rarely enjoy it.
Inside the cathedral, under the tallest Orthodox bell tower in the world, lie almost every Russian sovereign from Peter I onwards.
Nicholas II and his family were reinterred here in 1998, eighty years after their deaths, in a service the Orthodox Church attended with reservations it made public at the time. It is a working burial place as much as a monument.
The guided stop covers the fortress grounds and walls. The cathedral and the prison museum are separately ticketed interiors and are not part of this route, so plan a return visit if you want them.
The island is exposed and the wind off the Neva is sharp in every season. The ground is cobbled and uneven in places, and the ramparts involve steps without handrails.
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What the fare covers, and what to budget for separately.
The practical detail, and the answers people actually ask for.
May 1703, and the city takes its own founding date from that day rather than from any earlier settlement.
No. By the time it was finished in stone the border had moved, and it never repelled an assault.
Not on this route. The tower is a separate guided climb run by the site itself and needs its own arrangement.
Peter's son Alexei died inside in 1718; Dostoevsky was held in 1849, as were Bakunin, the Decembrists, Gorky and Trotsky.
A cannon fired daily from the Naryshkin Bastion, begun in the nineteenth century as a way for the city to set its clocks.
Much louder than people expect, with no warning. Small children and dogs rarely enjoy it.
Almost every Russian sovereign from Peter I onwards, with Nicholas II and his family reinterred in 1998.
No. The guided stop covers the grounds and walls; the cathedral and prison museum are separately ticketed interiors.