Anatole Senkevitch, Jr., Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, University of Michigan

Introduction

Founded by Peter the Great in 1703 on the barren marshlands of the Neva River as Russia’s “Window to the West,” St. Petersburg emerged as a practical and symbolic vehicle for transforming parochial Russia into a competitive European empire. Its physical and spatial setting, encompassing built forms, open spaces, and waterways, is a remarkable achievement of urban planning and design. That achievement is a result of the sustained and self-renewing power of strategic planning and design mandated by key sovereigns—from Peter the Great to Catherine II and particularly Alexander I—who sought to transform their new city into one of Europe’s preeminent capitals and cultural centers. That such an improbable project succeeded was also due to the caliber of the architects whose talents to create urban ensembles and integrate them into the city’s overall physical and spatial fabric were recognized and encouraged by these sovereigns.

Under the Romanovs

St. Petersburg was planned as a stage set for imperial statecraft and culture building, assuming its ultimate form with the creation of a monumental core of squares and urban ensembles in the reign of Alexander I. Within this grand architectural setting, cultural life developed and flourished in a dynamic relationship with the city’s imperial presence. St. Petersburg evolved as a major city of culture, immortalized in the writings of Alexander Pushkin, Nikolai Gogol, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Leo Tolstoy, and Andrei Bely. St. Petersburg’s cultural institutions, housed in imposing buildings and ensembles ranging from leading educational establishments to grand theaters, concert halls, conservatories, and renowned museums, are among the city’s most enduring architectural monuments.

The city’s apex as an international center of literature, music, theater, and ballet and as the scene of a lavish and turbulent social life was reached in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. At the same time, the imperial magnificence, centered on the tsarist autocracy, lay in sharp contrast to the misery of the masses that were drawn in to work on the wondrous construction projects and in the growing new industries on the city’s periphery.

The imperial court’s oversight of the urban development of St. Petersburg waned after the reign of Nicholas I. The city grew rapidly in the latter 19th century; its area increased as a newly emerging Russian entrepreneurial class built elaborate mansions, apartment houses, and commercial facilities. Buildings also multiplied in the center, built closer and closer together, prompting art and architectural organizations to mobilize popular support for protecting St. Petersburg’s historic core against an onslaught of adverse urban development. For all that, the growing city displayed a remarkable harmony of style.

The Soviet Years

Following the Russian Revolution in 1917 and the transfer of the capital to Moscow in 1918 from what was then Petrograd, the city fell in status from an imperial capital to a regional center. Nevertheless, Petrograd—renamed Leningrad following Lenin’s death in 1924—sought to maintain its identity as a Westernizing outpost. As the city of the poets Osip Mandelstam and Anna Akhmatova and the composer Sergei Prokofiev, it continued to flourish as a center of intellectual and cultural life through the 1920s and 1930s.

Leningrad’s historic core remained virtually intact throughout the Soviet period, retaining its coherence and integrity. A few notable buildings and ensembles were constructed in the Soviet era, chiefly in the outlying regions of the city.

During the Second World War Leningrad heroically withstood the 872-day German siege, during which many hundreds of thousands died of famine and disease and the city’s historic core sustained enormous damage from the bombardment. Before retreating, the Germans also destroyed the palaces at Peterhof and Tsarskoe Selo. After the war the Soviet government paid homage to the city’s heroic survival and enduring character by mounting a monumental campaign to restore its historic core and outlying palace complexes. Despite its erratic beginnings and depletion of resources, this ambitious decades-long project yielded impressive results and greatly bolstered the city’s civic identity and pride.

After the Soviet Union: St. Petersburg Today

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the former imperial capital has gone through tremendous changes. Residents voted to restore the city’s name from Leningrad to St. Petersburg. Determined to revive its once-glorious standing as Russia’s gateway to Europe, the city is in the midst of a bold new plan to revitalize its historic center. The plan seeks to sustain St. Petersburg’s singular classical architectural and urban setting while advancing the aspiration to modernize the center’s cultural and physical infrastructure for the 21st century.