Peter and Paul Fortress

Start with the sound underfoot. Wooden planks shift and creak as you cross the Ioannovsky Bridge. Below, the water of the Kronverk Strait moves slowly toward the Neva. Ahead, low walls of brick and granite rise from the island. Above them, a thin golden needle catches whatever light the northern sky offers. This is the Peter and Paul Fortress. The city of Saint Petersburg began here.

The island under your feet is small and flat. Its name is Hare Island. In 1703, Russia was at war with Sweden. Peter the Great wanted to hold the mouth of the Neva River and open a route to the Baltic Sea. Here, on marshy ground, his men began to dig a fortress. That same year is counted as the birth of the city. Every street and palace you will see later grew outward from this spot.

The first walls were made of earth and timber. They went up quickly because they had to. Within a few years, the builders began to replace them with brick and stone. The plan is a six-pointed shape with angled bastions. Each bastion carries the name of Peter himself or one of his close companions. Walk the outline and you can feel the logic of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century military design. Every wall covers another wall.

Here is the first surprise. This fortress was built for war, but it never fought a battle. The Swedish threat moved away as Russia won the Great Northern War. The walls and cannons stayed, but the enemy never came. So the fortress found other roles over the centuries. It became a prison, a mint, a royal burial place, and later a museum. Its history is more about power and memory than about siege.

Now look up at the cathedral. The Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul was designed by Domenico Trezzini, an architect from the Swiss-Italian borderlands. Peter brought him to Russia to help build a European-style capital. Russian churches usually have onion domes. This one has a tall, slender spire instead, closer to the churches of northern Europe. That choice was deliberate. Peter wanted his new city to look west, toward the Baltic and beyond.

The spire rises more than one hundred and twenty metres. For a long time it was the tallest structure in the city. At the very top stands a golden angel holding a cross. Locals treat the angel as a guardian of Saint Petersburg. Over the years, lightning and weather have damaged the spire, and repairing it at that height has always been dangerous work. When you stand in the square, follow the line of the needle up until the angel is only a small spark of gold.

Step inside the cathedral and the mood changes. The interior is bright, with pale columns, gilded details, and a carved wooden iconostasis — the screen of icons that separates the altar from the main hall in Orthodox churches. But the strongest impression comes from the rows of white marble tombs. This is the burial place of most Russian emperors and empresses from Peter the Great onward. Peter himself lies here, close to the city he founded.

The second surprise sits in a side chapel. In 1998, the remains of Nicholas the Second, the last emperor, were laid here together with members of his family. They had been killed in 1918, after the revolution, and buried in secret far away in the Urals. Their return to this cathedral was a major public moment in modern Russia. Many visitors pause in this quiet room longer than anywhere else in the building.

The fortress also has a darker side. For much of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it held political prisoners. Peter's own son, Alexei, died here after being accused of plotting against his father. Later, the Trubetskoy Bastion became a prison for revolutionaries and writers. The young Fyodor Dostoevsky was held in the fortress in 1849 before a mock execution. Today the cells are open to visitors. They are narrow, cold, and very silent.

Near the cathedral, look for a bronze figure of Peter the Great seated in a chair. It is the work of the artist Mikhail Shemyakin and was installed in the 1990s. The body is long and thin, the hands are large, and the head is strikingly small. Some people find it strange, even unsettling. Others love it. Either way, it is far from the heroic horseman you may see elsewhere in the city. Many visitors touch his fingers for luck.

Then there is the cannon. At noon every day, a shot is fired from the Naryshkin Bastion. The tradition is old, and for generations people across the city set their watches by the sound. Today it still rolls out over the Neva and makes tourists jump. If you are inside the walls close to midday, find a place near the bastion. The flash comes first, then the boom, then the drifting white smoke.

Beyond the walls, on the side facing the river, there is a narrow sandy beach. On warm summer days, people lie against the granite walls to sunbathe. In winter, some locals swim in holes cut into the ice. It is one of the most unusual views in Saint Petersburg — royal tombs and prison cells on one side, towels and swimsuits on the other. The fortress belongs to the city's daily life, not only to its past.

Before you leave, walk to the river side and look across the water. The long facades of the Winter Palace lie on the far bank. The wide Neva runs between you, grey or blue depending on the sky. Turn back and you will see the walls, the gates, and the golden spire above them. Everything on that far shore grew from this small island. As you cross the wooden bridge again, listen once more to the planks under your feet.