Saints Peter and Paul Cathedral

Stand still for a moment and look up. Above the low walls of the fortress, a thin golden needle rises into the sky over the Neva. On a clear day it catches the sun and flashes like a struck match. On a grey day, and Saint Petersburg has many, it seems to hold the only light in the whole sky. Underfoot are old cobbles and gravel paths. Around you, the wind comes straight off the river. This is the place where the city began.

You are standing on a small island in the Neva delta, inside the Peter and Paul Fortress. Peter the Great founded the fortress here in 1703, during his long war with Sweden for access to the Baltic Sea. The fortress came first. The city grew around it. So the cathedral in front of you sits at the true starting point of Saint Petersburg, on the ground where the first earth was dug.

The first church on this spot was made of wood. It went up quickly, in those early, muddy years. Then, in 1712, work began on the stone cathedral you see today. Peter chose a Swiss-Italian architect, Domenico Trezzini, who had come to Russia to help build the new capital. Construction took around two decades. The cathedral was consecrated in the early 1730s, after Peter himself had died.

Now look closely at the shape of the building. If you have seen older Russian churches, with clusters of onion domes, this one may surprise you. It is long and rectangular, with a tall bell tower at the western end. It looks more like a church in Amsterdam or northern Germany than one in Moscow. That was the point. Peter wanted his new city to face Europe, and he wanted its main church to say so.

The style is Baroque — the ornate, theatrical style of seventeenth and eighteenth century Europe. Here it is quite restrained. The walls are pale, with white pilasters, the flat columns set into the wall. The decoration is calm. Almost all of the drama goes upward, into the tower and its spire. The spire rises to roughly 122 metres. For a very long time it was the tallest structure in the city, and in the historic centre nothing comes close even today.

At the very top is a gilded angel. The angel holds a cross and appears to fly, turning slowly in the wind. It has become one of the city's symbols. There is a well-known story about it. In the nineteenth century, the story goes, the angel was damaged, and a roofer named Pyotr Telushkin climbed the spire without scaffolding to repair it, using only ropes. Whether every detail is true or not, people in Saint Petersburg still tell it with pride.

Now step inside, if you have your ticket. The cathedral usually needs a separate ticket from the fortress grounds. The first thing many visitors notice is the light. Tall windows fill the hall with daylight. It does not feel like a dark, candle-lit Orthodox interior. The columns are painted in soft colours to look like marble. The space feels airy, almost like a grand palace room.

At the far end stands the iconostasis, the screen of icons that separates the altar from the main hall in an Orthodox church. This one is carved wood, covered in gold. It was designed by Ivan Zarudny and carved in Moscow, then brought north. Look at how the carving curls and twists, with figures and leaves. It looks less like a wall of icons and more like a golden triumphal gate. Step back and you will see how it echoes the shape of an arch of victory.

Here is something most visitors do not expect. This cathedral is a tomb. From Peter the Great onward, almost every Russian emperor and empress was buried here. Peter himself lies near the iconostasis. His coffin rested in the unfinished building for years while the walls were still going up around it. Today, his grave is often marked by fresh flowers, and a small portrait stands nearby.

As you walk among the graves, look at the sarcophagi. Most are made of white marble, topped with gilded crosses. They look simple, almost identical, row after row. But two stand out. One is green jasper, the other pink rhodonite. These are the tombs of Emperor Alexander II and his wife. Each stone block was cut from the Urals and Siberia and took years to carve. Run your eye over the surface and notice how the colour moves through the stone like water.

There is a more recent chapter, too. Nicholas II, the last emperor, was killed with his family in 1918 after the revolution. Their remains were later identified, and in 1998 they were buried here, in a side chapel near the entrance. So this one building holds the beginning and the end of the Romanov dynasty. Peter, who founded the city, and Nicholas, the last tsar, lie under the same roof.

Before you leave the grounds, listen. The bell tower holds a carillon, a set of tuned bells played from a keyboard, a tradition from the Low Countries. On some days you can hear concerts drifting over the fortress. And if you are here around midday, you may hear something louder. A cannon on one of the bastions fires a single shot at noon. It is an old tradition, and first-time visitors often jump.

Walk out toward the river side of the fortress now. Turn around and look back. From the sandy beach and the stone walls along the Neva, you can see the whole cathedral at once: the pale body, the tower, the thin gold spire. Across the water are the palaces of the embankment. The river is wide here and moves fast. On calm days you can see the spire reflected in it.

Take a final look at that angel high above you. It has turned in the wind over this river for nearly three centuries. It watched the wooden fort become a capital, then a city of revolution, then the city you are walking through today. As you leave, notice how often you catch sight of the spire again — between buildings, across bridges, over rooftops. Saint Petersburg keeps pointing you back to where it began.