The Peter and Paul Fortress

Every story about St Petersburg starts on this small island in the Neva. In May 1703, during the war with Sweden, an earth fortress was laid down here to guard the river mouth, and the city grew up around it. The fortress never fought a battle. Instead it became the burial place of the emperors and, for two centuries, the empire’s most feared prison.

The route

The Ioannovsky Bridge. You meet where the city’s first street crossed onto the island at 10:00, then enter as visitors always have, through the ravelin and Domenico Trezzini’s Peter’s Gate.

The walls and bastions. Six bastions named after Peter I and his companions. Your guide explains how bastions, curtain walls and ravelins worked together, and why this design was the height of military science for a century.

The Peter and Paul Cathedral. Trezzini built the bell tower first so the new capital would have a landmark at once. The gilded spire with its angel rises 122.5 metres. Inside lie nearly all the emperors from Peter I to Alexander III, and since 1998 Nicholas II and his family. Next door is the Grand Ducal burial vault, added when the cathedral ran out of space.

Curiosities. Mikhail Shemyakin’s controversial 1991 statue of Peter I, with its tiny head and long fingers, and the Boat House, built for the little boat Peter called “the grandfather of the Russian navy”.

The prison. Tsarevich Alexei was its first prisoner in 1718. Later came the Decembrists, the young Dostoevsky, Bakunin, Chernyshevsky and Gorky, about fifteen hundred political prisoners in all before 1917. The Trubetskoy Bastion prison of 1872 was the empire’s main political jail.

The Neva Gate. The tour ends at the Commandant’s Pier, with flood marks on the granite and the best view of Palace Embankment. A signal gun fires from the Naryshkin Bastion every day at noon, so with good timing you will hear it.

Good to know

• The walk lasts about 2 hours and starts at 10:00 at the Ioannovsky Bridge.
• Entry tickets to the fortress and the cathedral are included; meals are not.
• The route is on foot over level ground and easy with children.
• The tour can be booked privately or as part of a group.

Who it suits

First-time visitors who want to start at the beginning, families with children, and anyone interested in the Romanovs or Russian political history.