Peter and Paul Fortress - Gallery

A stronghold founded in 1703 by Peter the Great on a small island in the Neva R delta, then called Ingermanland, an area seized from Sweden during the Northern War (1700–21), and around which the city of St Petersburg sprang up. The fortress, which was notorious throughout the 19th-c for its political prison, has been a museum since 1922.

The Peter and Paul Fortress (Russian: Петропавловская крепость, also Fortress of SS Peter and Paul) is the original citadel of St. Petersburg, Russia, designed by Domenico Trezzini and founded in 1703.

The fort was established by Peter the Great on May 16 (by the Julian Calendar, May 27 by the Gregorian Calendar) 1703 on a small island, Zayachii (hare) (or Vesiolii - cheerful) ostrov, on the Neva River.

During 1917, it was attacked by mutinous soldiers of the Pavlovskii regiment on February 27 (J) and the prisoners were freed. Under the Provisional Government hundreds of Tsarist officials were held in the Fortress, for their protection from the angry people. The Tsar was threatened with being incarcerated at the Fortress on his return from Mogilev to Tsarskoe Selo on March 8 (J), the threat was not followed through and he was placed under house arrest.

On July 4 (J) when the Bolsheviks attempted a putsch the Fortress garrison of 8,000 men declared for the Bolsheviks.

On October 25 (J), again, the Fortress quickly came into Bolshevik hands. Following the ultimatum from the Military-Revolutionary Committee to the Provisional Government ministers in the Winter Palace, after the blank salvo of the Cruiser Aurora at 21.00, the guns of the Fortress fired thirty or so shells at the Winter Palace. At 02.10 on the morning of October 26 (J) the Winter Palace was taken by forces under Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko, the captured ministers were taken to the Fortress as prisoners.

The Provisional Government ministers were the last prisoners at the Fortress.

Gallery

View of the fortress in 2005.

Inside the fortress.

Mikhail Chemiakin's statue of Peter I.

Peter and Paul Cathedral.