| Saint Petersburg was a project "from
the Center," built to be the hub of empire and modelled on the great European
capitals. When Peter the Great founded it, in the empty marshes of the Nevá
river delta, its expressed purpose was to "beat a window through to Europe."
In accordance with Enlightenment ideals, it was laid out on a regular, concentric
plan over a number of large, flat islands, bounded by the Great Nevá
and its many branches. Smaller branches were consolidated into a few regularly
spaced concentric canals, even the narrowest of which is straighter and
wider than the major canals of Venice. The larger branches crossing these
are swift-flowing granite-walled rivers. The hub of the structure is the
original Petrine nucleus, erected as a governmental, commercial, and military
center at the main branching of Nevá's widest arms. The size of the
river here is impressive, particularly in early winter, when the powerful
current has not yet frozen over and great sheets of snow-burdened ice surge
downstream, while steam rises from the flowing water. Flooding is always
a threat, with major inundations occurring in 1777, 1824, 1890, 1897, 1898,
1924, 1955, 1973, 1975 and 1986. The second and most catastrophic of these
is immortalized in the most famous poem to this much-sung city, Aleksándr
Púshkin's Médny vsádnik
(The Bronze Horseman), where the Czar's indomitable will confronts
the overflowing river, and the little man perishes in their struggle. Imagine
soldiers in the early 1700's crossing the river in mid-December in small
boats, and you will realize that this is a city built in defiance of nature,
which it has never conquered. In the early 20th century only four fixed
bridges crossed the Nevá; a fifth, the Palace Bridge, was erected
on boats and removed in winter, when roads were laid over the ice at several
points. Even today, a reminder of the river's power over the city guarding
it is given every night, when the bridges are raised for hours, laying inter-island
traffic dead for the duration. Across the river to the south of the Petrine nucleus lay a large tounge of marshy mainland, around which the Nevá swept before branching into its delta. Here Peter built his first shipyard, and here he planned that the metropolis should stand. On the riverbank were erected the Winter Palace and Hermitage, and facing these, away from the river, the vast semi-circle of Palace Square, bounded to the south and east by the curved facade of the General Staff building, and along its outer wall, running just south of east, stretched Névsky Prospékt for nearly five kilometers across the mainland peninsula till it remet the Nevá further upstream. Here lay the Aleksándr Névsky Lávra monastary, founded shortly after the city itself. At its westernmost extreme, after passing the General Staff, Névsky came to an end, just as a view opened up to the right onto Palace Square. Straight ahead lay the Admiralty, whose golden spike was visible for the entire length of Névsky after its one and only bend at Moscow Station. |