The Admiralty

Stand still for a moment and look up. Above the trees of the garden, a thin golden needle rises into the pale northern sky. On a grey day it holds what little light there is. On a bright one it flashes almost white. At its very tip, small enough to miss, sits a tiny gilded ship turning slowly in the wind off the Neva. This is the Admiralty, and that little ship is one of the oldest symbols of Saint Petersburg.

The story begins with Peter the Great. In 1704, only a year after he founded the city, Peter ordered a shipyard built here on the left bank of the Neva. He wanted a navy, and he wanted it fast. The first Admiralty was not a palace at all. It was a working yard, protected by earth ramparts and moats, because Russia was still at war with Sweden and the coast was far from safe.

Imagine the sound of this place three centuries ago. Hammers on timber. Saws biting through pine. The smell of hot tar and wet rope. Warships were built and launched right behind the spot where you are standing. Many vessels of the young Baltic Fleet slid into the river from these slipways. The city grew around the noise of this yard, almost as if Saint Petersburg were built to serve it.

The tower changed several times. In the 1730s, the architect Ivan Korobov raised a new tower in stone and crowned it with a tall gilded spire. That spire set the height and the profile that you still see today. Later builders liked it so much that they kept it. So the golden needle above you is older in spirit than the long yellow building beneath it.

The building you see now is the work of Andreyan Zakharov. He rebuilt the Admiralty in the early nineteenth century, from 1806 into the 1820s. Zakharov worked in the Empire style — a strict, grand form of neoclassicism, inspired by ancient Greece and Rome, that became the official language of Russian power after the wars with Napoleon. He wrapped the old shipyard in a new skin of columns, porticoes and pale yellow walls.

Here is the first surprise. Zakharov did not tear down Korobov's tower. He enclosed it. The older structure sits inside the new one, like a core inside a shell. He kept the spire and built a massive stone base around it, with a deep arched gateway at the bottom. That is why the tower feels so solid below and so light above. Two different eras are stacked on top of each other.

Now follow the length of the facade with your eyes. It runs for roughly four hundred metres, one of the longest frontages in the city. Zakharov knew a wall this long could feel heavy and dull. So he broke it with porticoes, rows of columns, and a careful rhythm of projecting and receding sections. Walk a little and watch the building change. It never repeats itself for very long.

The sculpture tells the story of the sea. Around the main arch, look for groups of sea nymphs carrying globes, made by the sculptor Fyodor Shchedrin. Above the gateway runs a long relief by Ivan Terebenev showing the founding of the Russian fleet. Higher up, statues stand along the tower's colonnade. The figures include heroes, seasons, winds and rivers. Every one of them points back to ships, water and empire.

Here is the second surprise, and it is about the whole city. Turn your back to the tower and look outward. Three great streets run away from here like the prongs of a fork. Nevsky Prospekt, Gorokhovaya Street, and Voznesensky Prospekt all aim at this golden spire. Planners used the Admiralty as the anchor of the city's layout. Wherever you walk along those streets, the needle stays in sight and guides you home.

Writers noticed. Alexander Pushkin, Russia's great national poet, wrote of the bright Admiralty needle in his poem The Bronze Horseman. The phrase stayed with readers, and today many people in the city still call the spire simply the Admiralty needle. It became a shorthand for Saint Petersburg itself, in the same way the river or the white nights are. Poets, painters and photographers have returned to it again and again.

The twentieth century brought danger. During the long Siege of Leningrad in the Second World War, the gold of the spire was a clear target for enemy artillery and aircraft. Local climbers and workers covered it to hide its shine from the guns. It was dangerous work at a great height, in freezing conditions, with little food. After the war the cover came off, and the gold returned to the skyline.

The shipyard itself left long ago. As ships grew larger, building them in the middle of the capital no longer made sense, and the yards moved elsewhere during the nineteenth century. The old moats and ramparts disappeared, and a garden grew in their place. Yet the building never lost its link to the sea. It still serves the Russian Navy, which is why most visitors admire it from outside rather than walking through its halls.

Before you go, look up one more time. Find the little ship at the top of the spire, catching the wind. Listen to the traffic on the avenues, the voices in the garden, and maybe the sound of the river just beyond the trees. Three centuries ago this was a place of hammers and tar. Now it is a quiet golden point that the whole city turns toward. As you walk away down any of those three streets, glance back. The needle will still be there.