Peter and Paul fortress

The fortress was laid on May 16, 1703, and it is from this day that Saint Petersburg dates its existence.
The first fortress was made of earth. It was rebuilt in stone under the supervision of the architect Domenico Trezzini who also designed a number of buildings within its walls, among them the Cathedral of Sts Peter and Paul.
The fortress is in plan an elongated hexagon stretched out from west to east. The bell-tower of the Cathedral of Sts Peter and Paul is one of the tallest architecture points of the city.
Access to the fortress is through St. John’s Gate , put up in the 1740s, and through the old St. Peter’s Gate designed by Trezzini. Preserved intact on the territory of the fortress are structures dating from the 18th and 19th centuries.
In the 18th century the fortress was turned into a political prison.
Its walls saw many famous prisoners, Lenin and Maxim Gorky among them.
The Cathedral of Sts Peter and Paul took 21 years to build – from 1712 to 1733. It has a hipped roof and a cupola of modest dimension over the altar; in plan it is an elongated rectangle. The interior of the cathedral resembles a palace hall. The lofty vaults rest on massive piers which partition off the interior into a nave and two aisles. The nave leads to an altar with a carved wooden iconostasis designed in the shape of a triumphal gate by Ivan Zarudny. Constructed in Moscow in the 1720s, the iconostasis is an incomparable example of Russian wood-carving.
Opposite the cathedral is a little pavilion, the so-called Boathouse built in 1763 to the design of Alexander Wist to house “the grandfather of the Russian Navy” – the boat of Peter the Great.