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Sunday, 22.07.2007
Peter the Great’s Cabin
Peter the Great’s Cabin is St. Petersburg’s oldest building. It was completed 10 days after the city was founded. At that time, only the foundations of the Peter-Paul fortress stood, and the rest of the Neva delta was covered in dense forest.
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Not far off, the Great Northern War, in which Russia had won this territory, was still being waged. Correspondingly, only a simple cabin was initially built for the Tsar.
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Although Peter the Great only dwelled in the cabin during the summer of 1703, it was the object of careful upkeep from all following rulers of Russia: Every successive Romanov family member planted a tree near the cabin – oaks, beeches, firs.
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| Coordinates |
Petrovskaya Naberezhnaya 6
Nearest Metro: Gorkovskaya
Opening times: 10.00am – 6.00pm
Closed: Tuesdays, last Monday in the month
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Already during Peter’s reign a wooden roof had been built to cover the cabin, to protect it from wind and rain and to preserve it for posterity. Tsar Nicholas I later replaced this wooden construction with one from brick. In 1929, the cabin, which since Peter’s death had housed a chapel, was completely restored and reopened as a museum.
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Peter had the gable of this cabin decorated with wooden sculptures depicting a mortar flanked by two burning bombs. This strange ornamentation seems to have been Peter’s foreign policy manifesto: He strove to make Russia a European Great Power and waged war to this end through out his reign.
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The wooden house with a floor area of only 66m² comprises a living room, a work room and a tiny bedroom. The interiors of the three rooms had been recreated in the style of the 18th century.
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Even some of the Tsar’s private possessions are on display, including a splendid velvet robe and artfully carved tobacco pipe. Right beside the cabin lies a small sailing boat, which Peter the Great is alleged to have built himself.
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For all the three centuries that have passed, the cabin still looks like a summerhouse in the country. The meadow around the single story brick building has grown high. But outside the boundary fence that sports double-headed eagles, the idyllic feeling ends, and the visitor is back in the heart of the metropolis of St. Petersburg and its five million inhabitants.
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(hw/rUFO)
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