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THE PETER AND PAUL FORTRESS
The Peter and Paul’s Fortress initially planned as an advanced post for defense of St. Petersburg has never participated in battles. Only the canon firing every noon reminds of the destination of the fortress and of the exact time.
Some years after the end of the Peter and Paul’s Fortress construction, it was used as a prison fortress, and mainly political prisoners were confined there. One of the first convicts of the Peter and Paul’s Fortress was the son of Peter the First tsarevitch Alexei. The tsarevitch was suspected of conspiracy against his father, and he was brought to the fortress together with other suspects. Alexei was cruelly tortured in the chambers of the fortress and after that he was executed.
Later, during all the XVIIIth and XIXth centuries, there were a lot of political prisoners in the cells of the Peter and Paul’s Fortress. Many of them underwent tortures there and then were put to death. There was High Court of Justiciary in the fortress, in one of the rooms of the Commandant’s House. It held inquests and imposed sentences upon prisoners of the Peter and Paul’s Fortress.
Decembrists who agitated the Tsarist Russia at the beginning of the XIXth century, were also confined in the fortress. Five of them, who were found the leaders of the Decembrists’ insurrection, heard their capital sentences within the walls of the Peter and Paul’s Fortress. These persons are well-known as fighters for constitutions in Russia: K. F. Ryleev, P. I. Pestel, S. I. Muravjev-Apostol, M. P. Bestuzhev-Rjumin, P. G. Kahovskiy.
The famous Russian classical authors Chernyshevsky and Gertsen were prisoners of the fortress, too. In 1849, being a 28-years-old beginning writer, F. M. Dostoevsky was brought to the fortress. Fyodor Mikhailovich was confined in the Peter and Paul’s Fortress together with other co-defendants of Butashevich-Petrashevsky. Dostoevsky was released soon after the trial.
Before the revolution of 1917, soldiers of the Paul’s Regiment who acted against the Tsarist Power became one of the last prisoners of the fortress. But soon (at the end of the February) they were released because the garrison of the Peter and Paul’s Fortress rose in rebellion. After the Bolsheviks’ revolution of 1917, the members of temporary government settled in the fortress.
Apart from the prison functions, the Peter and Paul’s Fortress was also a burial-vault of Russian emperors. Graves of Russian tsars are situated in the Peter and Paul’s Cathedral. The first grave belongs to Peter the First. It is decorated with banners of those regiments which together with Peter smashed Swedes during the Northern War of 1700-1721. Grand dukes of Russia are also buried in the burial-vault. All the sarcophagi under which the royal persons lie are made of white marble.
The graves of Alexander the Second and his wife Maria Alexandrovna, originally Princess Gessen-Darmshtadskaya, are decorated differently. The fact is that workers of Ural plants, in consideration of the abolition of serfdom, brought from the Urals coloured Ural jasper and rhodonite and beatified with these minerals the graves of the emperor and his wife. Maybe it is not just a memorial to the great Russian tsar, but it is a memorial to people’s gratitude.
The last person buried there, many years after his death, in 1998, in the bound of Saint Catherine, was the last Russian emperor Nicolay the Second together with the members of his family who were shot to death by Bolsheviks in Yekaterinburg, in 1918.
From the beginning of the XXth century, more exactly from 1924, a museum was opened in the Peter and Paul’s Fortress. All the territory of the fortress was converted into the museum, and its coasts - into the city beach. The first to see for guests and tourists were the Peter and Paul’s Cathedral and the former prison of the Trubetskoy Bastion.
At present, there is the directorate and the main pavilions of the history museum of St. Petersburg on the territory of the Peter and Paul’s Fortress. The fortress is full of the spirit of the past centuries; one can feel the presence of great people everywhere. The Peter and Paul’s Fortress is a unique and exceptional museum, and there are only a few equal ones in the world.
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