St. Petersburg :

History, glory and mystery

Evelina Rioukhina, UNECE

St. Petersburg’s history is rich and truly exciting. Founded in 1703 to be the most European city of Russia, it remains Russia’s “Window to the West” – just as Peter the Great meant it. When St.Petersburg was nine years old, it became the capital of Russia and retained this status till 1918. Even now it is referred to as the “Northern capital” of Russia. Over 300 years of its history St. Petersburg accumulated all the grandeur of the Russian Imperial Court and became one of the largest centers of culture. Recently, the city was officially proclaimed the “Cultural capital of Russia”.

The city has a population around 5 million, is situated at the river Neva, named in honor of St. Peter (and NOT Peter the Great, the founder of the city). The name can be translated as “The city of St. Peter”. The name was changed several times: May 1703 until August 1914, St.Petersburg; August 1914 –February 1924, Petrograd; February 1924 – July 1991, Leningrad; and in July 1991, St.Petersburg.

Back to the history, the lands along the Neva River have belonged to the Ancient Russian state since at least the 9^th century. However, throughout history these lands have had a mixed population of Slavs, Finns and other ethnic groups. From at least the ninth century this area was a part of the Principality of Novgorod, an important center of international and domestic trade and craftsmanship. When in the 16^th century Novgorod was subdued by Moscow, the lands along the Neva River became part of the centralised Russian state – Muscovite Russia. In the 17^th century serious unrest started in Russia, and after the death of the tsar Fyodor Ioanovich, the son of Ivan the Terrible, the new ruler, Vasily Shuisky invited the Swedes to fight on his side and the Swedes occupied a significant portion of North-Western Russia. As from 1617 the Stolbovo Treaty set a new border between Russia and Sweden, and the Swedes effectively cut off Russia from the Baltic Sea. By the very end of the 17^th century that was no longer to be tolerated. Peter the Great was keen on regaining access to the Baltic Sea and establishing strong ties with the West. In the hope of achieving these goals he had started the Northern war with Sweden (1700-1721). In 1703 the Russians gained control over the Neva River and on May 27 (May 16^th – old calendar), 1703, St. Petersburg fortress (Peter and Paul’s Fortress) was founded and that day became the official birthday of the city.

For its first few years the St. Petersburg of Peter the Great was a small town around the fortress, but by 1712 it was big enough to become the new Russian Capital.

During the reign of Elizabeth, daughter of Peter the Great, St. Petersburg finally became a fine European capital. After 20 years of Elizabeth’s reign St.Petersburg and its suburbs could rival the most beautiful European cities.

The Imperial splendour of St.Petersburg was best reflected in the suburban royal residences. Peter the Great’s estate Peterhoff was remodelled by Bartolomeo Rastrelli, the architect of the Winter Palace and the Smolny Cathedral. The Yekaterininsky (Catherine’s) Palace in Tsarskoye Selo (Pushkin), which once used to belong to Peter the Great’s wife Catherine, was now turned into a magnificent royal residence with a vast and elaborate Baroque gardens. Elizabeth’s nephew Peter III did not rule for too long. Shortly after assuming power he was overthrown by his wife, a German princess, who soon became the famous Catherine the Great. Under he rule St. Petersburg turned into a “Grand City”. Catherine’s court was extremely luxurious. She started a royal art collection, which later became the world-famous Hermitage. Under Catherine’s patronage science, the arts and trade flourished. New buildings for the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Academy of Fine Arts and the first Public Library were constructed and the large Gostiny Dvor trading complex was opened on Nevsky Prospect. Many educational institutions were established.

The city witnessed many dramatic events. One of the most tragic period in the history of this city was the Siege of Leningrad during the World War II, which lasted for about 900 days, from September 8, 1941 till January 27, 1944. The city of 2,887,000 civilians including about 400,000 children didn’t even consider any calls for surrender. Food and fuel was very limited (food rations in the city were only 125 grams of bread in day. These 900 days siege of Leningrad cost the city the loss of 641,000 human lives. Despite these difficulties, cold and starvation, the city lived on, hiding and protecting the treasured of the Hermitage and the suburban palaces of Petrodvorets, Pushkin, etc. Thanks to the heroism of people most of the treasures of painting and architecture were preserved, and today the Hermitage collection (over 3,000,000 items) of the world culture and art from the Stone Age to the 20^th century is one of the biggest and richest collections in the world. However, one of the most sad events of this time was not possible to prevent: the Amber Room disappeared from the Catherine’s Palace, and with this started the mystery of what is generally considered to be the greatest of the missing treasures of Europe.

The Amber Room

The Amber Room is surely one of the most original and - since its disappearance in 1944 in the aftermath of the WWII - mysterious of the world’s works of art. The exquisite room made of several tons of the golden tree resin - the lightest gem in the world - is often referred to as the “Eighth Wonder of the World”.

The Amber Room was a series of large wall panels inlaid with several tons of masterfully carved high-quality amber, long wall mirrors and four Florentine mosaics. The amber, which covered three walls, was arranged in three tiers. The central (middle) tier consisted of eight large, symmetrical vertical panels. Four of them contained pictures made of semiprecious stones like quartz, jasmine, jade and onyx, executed in the 1750s in Florence using the Florentine mosaic technique according to designs by the artist Giuseppe Dzokki, and depicting five senses: Sight, Taste, Sound, Touch and Smell. The distance between the large panels was occupied by mirrored pilasters. The lower tier of the room was covered in square amber panels. One of the corners contained a small amber table on an elegantly turned leg. The room’s furnishings consisted of inlaid wood commodes of Russian origin, and a vase of Chinese porcelain. In addition, one of the most valuable collections of amber objects created in the 17th and 18th centuries by German, Polish and Russian masters was housed in the room’s glass-covered display cases.

Over the years, the lost chamber — a Prussian gift to St. Petersburg’s founder, Tsar Peter the Great — ignited imaginations and inspired a series of treasure hunts.

Some said the treasure was buried in a silver mine not far from Berlin (German investigator Helmut Gaensel). Other investigators believe the Nazis did not remove the treasure from Konigsburg, but hid it on the shore of the Baltic Sea, under the murky waters of a lagoon close to Neringa. (from BBC, 1 August 1998). Still others went as far as South America searching for the room.

In 1979, the Soviet government initiated reconstruction of the room, allocating about $8 million. Germany’s Ruhrgas, the biggest importer of Russian gas, joined the project in 1999 and donated $3.5 million, helping guarantee its completion.

Many of the approximately 30 artisans on the project have devoted the better part of their working lives to it, hunched over microscopes to etch tiny designs into the amber, inhaling amber dust. The reconstruction used some six tons of the stone. Even before the work started, it took 11 years just to research the room and reinvent old craftsmanship techniques, said Tatyana Zharkova, spokes- woman for the Tsarskoye Selo museum. “From the pictures the experts obtained, one could tell that the room was made of amber of at least 13 various tints, but nobody knew exactly what those tints were” from the black-and-white photographs, she said. Experts worked off modern black-and-white photographs of amber of various tints and compared them with pre-war pictures, helping them draw conclusions about which shade was used in which panels. The responsibility for deciding the coloring was given to a single craftsman, Krylov, for the sake of consistency.

Russia’s legendary Amber Room, which vanished after German troops looted it from an imperial palace during World War II, made a reappearance in May, after a nearly quarter-century reconstruction.

On 31 May, Russian President Vladimir Putin and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder opened the room to the invited heads of state at St. Petersburg’s 300th birthday anniversary. And from 2 June 2003 the Amber Room is open to the public. As some of the surviving witnesses of the original room confirm, the new room looks even more luxurious than the old one. The restorations and the opening of Amber Room is an enormous present to the city, to the country and to world heritage.

However, the missing biggest treasure of Europe remains until now, for almost 60 years, an unresolved mystery…