The bridge for kisses, the street in honor of Barmaley and other misconceptions about the architecture of St. Petersburg

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

The history of this romantic and mysterious city is accompanied by various legends. People pick them up and pass them on from year to year to their descendants, write about it in literature, tell tourists. One of the myths says that St. Petersburg was named after Peter the Great. But it is known for certain that in the name of the city on the Neva, the tsar immortalized not himself, but his patron saint - the Apostle Peter.

By the way, the popular abbreviation "Peter" did not appear today, but at the beginning of the 18th century. Then the capital was called in the Dutch manner "St. Peter Burh". It was difficult for people to pronounce a long phrase and they only pronounced the middle.

Petersburg was built on impenetrable desert swamps

There is a version that the territory of St. Petersburg before its foundation was impenetrable dense forests and bogs. But in fact, the Northern Capital was not built on a wetland, but on the territory of the Baltic Sea beaches. And several millennia ago, sea waters reached the modern Liteiny Prospekt. At the end of the 13th century, the Swedes built the Landskronu fortress here. In 1611, the town of Nyen already stood in this place, which gained great commercial importance due to its convenient location next to the sea and navigable rivers.

Until the 18th century, there were about forty Ingermanland and Russian villages on the historical territory of St. Petersburg, which already contradicts the version of endless wilderness swamps. On Vasilievsky Island there was a hunting house of Jacob Delagardie, on the site of the admiralty buildings - a Swedish settlement, instead of the Smolny and Tavrichesky palaces - the village of Spasskoye, the villages of Sebrino and Vralovshchina. The people who lived in these territories before the founding of the Northern capital became the first Petersburgers.

When Peter I took Nyen during the Great Northern War in 1703, precisely because of the favorable location for trade, he decided to build a new city here. Rumors of impenetrable swamps could presumably have arisen in the 18th century, when the banks of the Krivushi River (Griboyedov Canal) and Fontanka were built up. Construction work has led to the fact that there is no natural runoff between the rivers. The upper clay layer did not allow water to pass through, therefore, reservoirs formed on Dumskaya, Mikhailovskaya and Sadovaya streets. The first was called the Deaf duct. The pond in the Yusupov Garden, which has survived to this day, is the remnant of one of these reservoirs located along Sadovaya Street. In fact, such ponds were large "puddles" on the clay surface, but they cannot be called swamps.

To strengthen the soil, the builders brought in earth and sand, and the river beds were filled with gravel to drain the reservoirs. These works were carried out until 1780, when the city was finally dressed in granite.

Buildings in St. Petersburg still had to be erected on piles, but not because of the impenetrable swamp bogs. Groundwater flowed between the clay layer and the sand embankments. To prevent the displacement of layers, the soil was strengthened with piles, like nails. During the construction of the building of the Twelve Collegia, about 3, 5 thousand piles were driven in, under the Peter and Paul Fortress - 40 thousand.

The city is built on the bones of the peasants

From century to century, legends have spread about the terrible conditions in which the builders of St. Petersburg had to work. Peter I allegedly ordered thousands of peasants to come to the construction site of the capital. They were mercilessly exploited, they were not given food, they were not heated, and the dead workers were simply thrown into pits and covered with lime.

The city was actually built by the forces of the peasants. For example, in 1704 there were about 40,000 people at the construction site. These were mainly state and landlord peasants. All of them worked in shifts of 3 months, after which they could continue working or go home. Many peasants still stayed, because they regularly paid a ruble a month for their work, which was considered the standard salary of construction workers. For peasants from distant regions, this was a very profitable job.

In the 50s of the XX century, archaeologists carried out excavations on the territories of major construction works and did not reveal either single or mass graves. On the contrary, many pits were found with scraps and remains of animal bones. This means the workers were regularly and well fed. All burials are concentrated in cemeteries, the area of which does not exceed the standard indicators of that time.

Reporting to W. A. Senyavin of 1712, it is said that out of more than two thousand peasants who arrived, 61 people died, and 365 fled. Mortality in St. Petersburg during the time of Peter did not exceed the average figures in Russia due to high-quality Neva water, good nutrition and the prevention of intestinal infections (each worker was supposed to have fish oil and vinegar).

Menshikov embezzled money intended for the construction of canals

Another myth about St. Petersburg is associated with Prince Alexander Menshikov - the "right hand" of Peter I. According to legend, the emperor wanted to make "little Amsterdam" on Vasilievsky Island, where instead of streets there would be numerous canals, and entrusted this task to his associate. Menshikov, in turn, squandered all the funds, and in order to save money, he built the canals much narrower than planned. As a result, the canals had to be filled up, since even boats could not swim along them.

This story turned out to be just an entertaining fiction from the book by Jacob von Stehlin "True anecdotes about Peter the Great." In fact, under Peter the Great, the construction of canals in the Northern capital was not even planned. They appeared only in 1730, 5 years after the death of the tsar, and Catherine II ordered to fill them up in 1767.

The eagle over the city, the bronze horseman and other legends about St. Petersburg

The construction of St. Petersburg was overgrown with a large number of "fairy tales" that were passed down from generation to generation. The founding date of the cultural capital is May 27, 1703. On this day, the tsar laid the first stone at the site of the Peter and Paul Fortress. Folk legend says that when Peter I was examining the Hare Island reclaimed from the Swedes, he stopped and said: "There will be a city here." At that moment, an eagle appeared in the sky and hung directly over the emperor.

In fact, on May 27, the emperor was in the Schlotburg fortress and did not leave anywhere from there. This is evidenced by the entries in the journal - all letters sent by Peter I in May and June 1703 were marked by Schlotburg. In addition, ornithologists are sure that eagles never lived in that area. The monument to Peter I on Senate Square acquired the name "The Bronze Horseman" with the light hand of A. S. Pushkin. But there is not a single gram of copper in this statue - the rider is completely made of bronze. This does not mean that Alexander Sergeevich was mistaken, just in those days copper and bronze were considered synonymous.

Couples in love who come to St. Petersburg try to visit the Kisses Bridge. If you believe in acceptance, a date on this bridge will become a symbol of strong and eternal love. But this name has nothing to do with romance. The bridge is named after the merchant Potseluev, who opened the Kiss tavern on the corner of modern Glinka Street.

Some tourists and even residents of St. Petersburg still believe that Barmaleev Street is named after a character from the tale of Korney Chukovsky. In fact, it was the other way around. The street was laid in the Northern capital back in 1730. At first it was called Perednyaya Matveevskaya, and the current name was mentioned in written sources in 1798. According to one version, the highway is named after the merchant Barmaleev, who kept trade warehouses here. In the early 1920s, Chukovsky, together with the artist M. I. Dobuzhinsky walked around St. Petersburg and wandered into Barmaleeva Street. Dobuzhinsky was inspired by the unusual name and painted the terrible but funny robber Barmaley, whose image Chukovsky later used for his fairy tale.

And in St. Petersburg there is house in the form of a snake.