A Growing City

The people who lived at the turn of the 18th century were deeply astonished by the emergence of such high-rise structures as the spires of the Peter and Paul Cathedral and the Admiralty on the Neva banks. The establishment of the Navy was like the launch of a human being into space. The construction of a new city on a recently conquered territory and its transformation into an imperial capital was perceived as a whim by some boyars. However, despite all hurdles, the determination and political will of Peter I, whose governmental ambitions prevailed over the personal ones, allowed him to create a new city that has become an architectural heritage gem of global significance. It is the first Russian emperor who greets you at the main entrance of the Lakhta Center complex. You are looking at the monument titled “Peter the Great Saves the Drowning near Lakhta.” The monument has a complicated past.

Once, at the World Exhibition in Paris, Nicholas II was attracted by two models of monuments to his ancestor, Peter the Great. The models were designed by a native of Riga, Leopold Bernshtam, then living in the capital of France. The monarch ordered them to be cast in bronze and installed in St. Petersburg. The statues appeared at the Admiralty Embankment and caused a mixed reaction in the artistic world. Alexander Benois classified them as “the cheap Art Nouveau.”

Anyway, we will not look at why the Art Nouveau style was so displeasing to the well-known art historian. A copy of the Tsar Carpenter sculpture was given as a present to the Dutch town of Zaandam and fit there perfectly. However, when the Russian Soviet Socialist Republic came to power, those critical artistic opinions were used as a pretext for destroying the sculptures as being of no artistic value.

In 1996, a copy of Zaandam’s monument to Peter I was given by the Government of the Netherlands to St. Petersburg, so the tsar returned back to the Admiralty Embankment. The second monument was restored to mark the 350th anniversary of Peter the Great according to the design by sculptor Stepan Mokrousov-Guglielmi and architect Mikhail Mamoshin. The emperor is depicted saving sailors near the Lakhta village in November 1724. As is commonly known, it was then that Peter I caught a bad cold, which brought him to the grave.

Thus, due to Gazprom’s efforts, the monument to the reformer tsar commemorating his heroic deed received a new lease of life.

The territory of the Lakhta and Olgino settlements is mainly known as the place where the famous Thunder Stone for the Bronze Horseman monument was found, but we will return to that later, at the end of our route. Not far from here, by the Lakhtinsky Razliv lake (behind the railroad track), geographer and polar explorer Pavel Wittenburg accidentally discovered an ancient encampment near his dacha. Later, quite a lot of fishing hooks, arrowheads and other stone age tools were also found nearby.

So, my dear friends, you are walking not far from a Neolithic settlement, which means that the history of this area began not many centuries, but many millennia ago.

Now let’s go down to the water.

This place, which is now one of the most dynamically developing districts of St. Petersburg, used to be a rural area. The Staraya Derevnya and Novaya Derevnya (the Old Village and the New Village) are the names given to the estates of Count Alexey Bestuzhev-Ryumin, the chancellor of the Russian Empire during the reign of Empress Elizaveta Petrovna. In the villages lived his peasants who worked in the count’s residence located on Kamenny Island.

Komendantsky Prospect that later gave its name to the metro station was laid out in the suburban area, where the country house of the commandant of the Peter and Paul Fortress used to be. Parashutnaya Street takes its name from the Komendantsky Airfield, which in early 20th century was a venue for some of the most breathtaking shows then available: aeroplane flights and aeronautics festivals. The airfield played a vital role during the years of the siege as the takeoff area for the planes that defended the city. It was also used for receiving cargoes and sending people from the besieged city to the mainland.

Across the Lakhta harbor, you can see the Park of the 300th Anniversary of St. Petersburg, one of the favorite recreation places of the city’s residents and a venue for various events, such as VK Fest, which is annually held there. The park boasts the Dol Hareubang statues symbolizing friendship and happiness that are a gift from the Republic of Korea, as well as several hundreds of apple trees that came from Helsinki.

Let us turn around and look at the Lakhta Center. There is a record holder in front of you. Yes, you heard that right; it is perhaps one of the most globally recognized modern architectural masterpieces in Russia. This is not only because it is Europe’s tallest building at its height of 462 meters and the world’s northernmost skyscraper.

In 2000, the Emporis Skyscraper Award was launched, which was conceived by its founders “to recognize excellence in aesthetic and functional design in the field of high-rise architecture.” The Lakhta Center tower won the award in 2019, thus becoming the first Russian skyscraper ranked on such a prestigious list.

Another “Oscar” of architecture that went to the building is the prize awarded by the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH). The jury of that international contest named the Lakhta Center the world’s best in as many as four categories: the best building of 400+ meters, the best in facade engineering, the best construction with the use of innovations, and the best unique engineering solutions.

By the way, did you know that high-rise buildings used to be called “cloud busters” in Russia? We will also use this term for a change; after all, it is absolutely true, since the tower top literally pierces through the clouds.

The high-rise also has an achievement that will appeal to everyone concerned about the well-being of our planet. The Lakhta Center has received the highest performance score, Platinum, under the environmental performance criteria of the LEED international certification program. According to the experts, the skyscraper ranks among the world’s five most environmentally sustainable ultra-high buildings.

Even its construction process was marked with a world-class accomplishment. The Lakhta Center set a Guinness World Record for the largest continuous concrete pour at almost 20,000 cubic meters in 49 hours. That is how the builders did the concreting for the lower foundation slab of the cloud buster.

With such a list of achievements, it is not surprising that the Lakhta Center boasts the most advanced engineering and structural solutions. Each floor of the tower shifts by one degree, creating a unique smoothly twisting shape. The entrance arch of the complex has an unsupported span of 98 meters, which is equal to the width of St. Isaac’s Cathedral. The arch facade is held by glass columns; this is a unique structure where glass is a load-carrying element. This kind of load-carrying glass structure is the only one in the world.

The buildings will accommodate the headquarters of Public Joint Stock Company Gazprom, as well as infrastructure for the general public and everything necessary for leisure and educational activities. A total of 15,000 people will work in the building.

Now let us move on to the panoramic terrace “on the corner” of the embankment, where the Feather art installation is located.

As the famous Russian song goes, “There, far beyond the river, fires sparkled.” And we can see that there, far beyond the river which flows into the Gulf of Finland, the reclaimed lands of Vasilyevsky Island are expanding. They are hardly the first to have been reclaimed in the city. A “New Petersburg” was conceived to be built in the western part of Dekabristov Island back in 1898. Such architects as Ivan Fomin and Fyodor Lidval were commissioned for the project.

It was planned to create a new city, and Italian business magnate Riccardo Gualino, who made his fortune by delivering lumber from Eastern Europe, came forward to be its main developer. As Mr. Gualino was also engaged in trading cement, it is quite natural that he was interested in the immense construction works that lay ahead on rapidly developing Vasilyevsky Island. The huge project was designed in the neo-classical Palladian style. The choice of the project name was not accidental. The plan was indeed to build a mini-capital on Dekabristov Island, and land reclamation was started to achieve that. Those plans were interrupted by the First World War and then by the 1917 revolution. However, several buildings on Kakhovskogo Street and Baltiyskikh Yung Square were built before the project halted.

The next land reclamation project did not happen until the 1970s. Nalichnaya Street (which means “Face Side Street”) owes its name to the fact that it faced the sea. The street ran right next to the gulf. The entire area to the west of the Primorskaya metro station is reclaimed land, and the main symbols of this area are the well-known “Houses on Chicken Legs” on Novosmolenskaya Embankment.

The latest stage of reclamation took place in our times, when entire neighborhoods and a new Passenger Port appeared beyond Morskaya Embankment.

Now, the Primorsky District and Vasilyevsky Island are connected by the Western High-Speed Diameter passing by the Gazprom Arena stadium. It is the home stadium of Football Club Zenit, near which there is the city’s largest ice rink that is open to the public in winter and can accommodate 1,100 people. In 2025, an all-season open-air swimming pool will also be opened there. All these facilities are part of the Flagshtock public space owing its name to the 105-meter high flag pole which flies Zenit’s flag on the days of football matches and various festive events.

Three more huge flags are flying over the Park of the 300th Anniversary of St. Petersburg. They were raised on June 17, 2023. This is the world’s first ensemble of water-based flag poles that boast a height of 179.5 meters. Each flag cloth is 40 meters wide and 60 meters long, and weighs 547 kilograms. The historical flags of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union and the state flag of the Russian Federation symbolize the unity of the country and the continuity of traditions.

Due to their huge size, the flags are not allowed to be raised when the wind speed is below 3 m/s or above 12 m/s, as well as during rainstorms, freezing rains, fog, snowfalls, and hailstorms.

Speaking about the link of times, another initiative of Gazprom is to be mentioned at this point. On June 15, 1712, the first ship of the line built in St. Petersburg, the 54-gun Poltava vessel, was launched from the Admiralty Shipyards. On May 27, 2018, a full-scale replica of the battleship was launched. Yours truly visited the Shipyard of Historical Shipbuilding where the replica vessel was created and talked to the engineers; they were complaining that even 3D modeling software does not always help understand how to “marry some parts up.” This is exactly how one of the engineers put it. So, the genius of our ancestors is indeed astonishing: they built such huge things without the aid of any modern technologies.

The Poltava battleship was restored at the Poltava Shipyard of Historical Shipbuilding.

I think we should now take a rest from walking and standing and have a sit on a bench.

Dmitry Merezhkovsky is his novel Peter and Alexis cites the famous words uttered by Peter the Great: “I will have a braver garden than the French King at Versailles.” It is true that a visit to the favorite country residence of Louis XIV left Peter I stunned and delighted by the park and gardens nurtured by the Sun King. The Russian Emperor immediately decided to create not just an analogue, but something larger and more spectacular. To that end, he summoned Jean-Baptiste Le Blond who learned directly from André Le Nôtre, the very landscape architect who designed the gardens of the Palace of Versailles.

So, in addition to boulders and shipbuilding timber, the new capital of Russia started to receive cargoes of trees, shrubs, plants, and flowers, complete with soil for planting them. Trees were also brought from the forests of the Smolensk and Moscow Regions, as well as from Siberia and the areas near the Baltic Sea. In 1712, Boris Kurakin sent 1,300 lindens from Amsterdam, and they were planted on Nevsky Prospect. A ship from Danzig (present Gdańsk) brought new additions for the Summer Garden. Trees from India arrived on a ship from Rome, and another ship from Spain delivered Spanish cherry trees. Boxwoods, elms and chestnuts never seen on the Izhora Land before were also coming from distant countries. Petr Apraksin was ordered to send someone to Gilan province (Iran) to purchase orange trees, lemon trees and other tree species unusual for St. Petersburg.

Peter I indeed succeeded in creating the Summer Garden with all the usual attributes of a leisure park in the French formal style, including bosquets, gazebos and even fountains, and, what is more, featuring the Apothecary Garden for growing medicinal herbs. Aptekarsky Island, as we call it today, takes its name from that herb garden. Owing to Peter I, the city he had created was dressed in gardens and parks.

These traditions were followed during the landscaping works at the Lakhta Center. To complement the embankments “clad in granite”, as poet Nikolay Yazykov wrote about the Neva River banks, almost 19,000 square meters of granite pavement were laid. The granite stone, which came from the quarry near the Vyborg town, is sober grey-brown with a pale-pink tint, a pattern of patches and slightly translucent quartz deposits. The main walkways are paved with the Zheltau granite mined in Kazakhstan, while the diagonal lines are in multicolor granite from the Dymovskoye quarry in the Leningrad Region.

The array of plantings includes hundreds of large-sized trees, more than 2,000 shrubs, over 11,000 square meters of lawn, and nearly 17,000 perennial flowers. Over 20 planters and about 50 litter bins are installed on the embankment.

There are various benches, including multilevel geometric ones. Mobile devices can be charged here, as you may have already noted.

The security measures at the embankments are perfectly thought out: the video surveillance system is always on, and bright illumination helps it at night. Almost 650 luminaires of various types provide comfortable conditions during the evening and night and create a fabulous architectural lighting. All walking areas are equipped with tactile tiles for persons with disabilities.

And now let’s move on to the amphitheater.

In the Petrine era, fires were the main trouble of all cities. As for St. Petersburg, it also suffered from floods. They occurred about 3–4 times a year, but the flood-water level was low. Peter I wrote that in his apartments “water stood twenty-one inches high, while in the garden and on the opposite shore it was high enough to boat on.” 21 inches is around half a meter. And then the tsar added: “It was very amusing to see people, men and women, perched on roofs and trees as on Ararat at the Great Flood.”

But in the year 1777, it was not “amusing” at all. The first catastrophic flood that came to St. Petersburg damaged the city so much that the Summer Garden’s fountain system was considered beyond repair, same as all the buildings that had been washed away from the place. Since then, the garden was not French formal anymore, but became an English landscape one. Until, in our times, it was restored to its original style.

The next great flood occurred in 1824; it is described in The Bronze Horseman poem, the literary work which has become a symbol of St. Petersburg. The reminders of that flood are the plates indicating high water marks on the city’s buildings, for example, on the Raskolnikov House.

The last largest flood came precisely 100 years later, in the Soviet time. And the new government became focused on finding the ways to protect the city.

It was long believed that it was the Neva overflowing down the current. But then it became clear that a counter wave comes from the west and creates storm surges that flood the city streets. As early as 1824, Pierre-Dominique Bazaine proposed constructing a dam that was to cut across the Gulf of Finland, but the project was technically impossible at that time. Only almost 150 years later, the St. Petersburg Flood Prevention Facility Complex was built, which stretches from the Gorskaya settlement on the northern shore across Kronstadt to the Bronka railway station on the southern shore. The Complex has 11 dams, six culvert structures, two floating gates for navigation, and a six-lane motorway, a part of which is in an underground tunnel. Soviet, and later Russian engineers and design engineers employed unique technologies to build a protection facility this large.

And here, it’s time to note the unique technologies of the Lakhta Center that protect it from various emergencies. As fires were mentioned at the start of this topic, it is worth saying that for supertall buildings, the main fire protection strategy is to preclude the slightest possibility of fire. There are no open flame sources in the Lakhta Center, and the materials used in the construction and finishing works are incombustible and flame-retardant. For example, all main reinforced concrete structures can withstand exposure to fire for minimum four hours with no distortion of their geometry, and the facade glass will start losing integrity only at a temperature of above 600 degrees Celsius. Should a fire incident nevertheless take place, the Lakhta Center tower has everything necessary for safe evacuation and fire suppression.

If the fire alarm sounds, people in the building are to go to one of the two staircases located in the core of the skyscraper. The staircases are smoke-free: the pressure inside the stairwell is 10 per cent higher, so neither fire nor products of combustion can enter it. Using the staircases, one can either reach the nearest safety zone or leave the building. The rest will be done automatically: an innovative water mist system will be activated for fire suppression. The system creates a very dense fog to extinguish fire, which is several times more effective than usual water. The water mist suppresses fire gases very well, too. Five special elevators for firefighters will work even during an emergency. A fire is practically impossible to happen in the Lakhta Center, but just in case it does happen, both people and buildings are strongly protected.

And now, let’s go on with our tour.

The Neva Bay is the part of the Gulf of Finland stretching up to Kotlin Island; the bay was also known by the sobriquet “the Marquis Puddle.” The thing is, in Pushkin’s times, Russian Minister of Naval Affairs was a Frenchman: Jean Baptiste, marquis de Traversay, and during his office, the Baltic fleet did not sail farther than Kronstadt. Hence the ironic nickname of the bay.

The bay is quite shallow for deep draft marine vessels, and the fairway was very meandering and challenging, creating a high risk of running aground, which made the Marquis Puddle only safe for galleys. So, in those times, all merchant ships arrived at Kronstadt for their cargo to be reloaded onto smaller vessels that carried it directly to St. Petersburg, to the spit of Vasilyevsky Island. A port was there, hence the customs building which is still present today. Those operations made imports more complicated and expensive.

Only as late as 1885, the Sea Channel was opened, making it possible for ships to reach the seaport on Gutuevsky Island. That technological breakthrough made freight transport by sea a lot easier. Just the same as ships encounter various natural phenomena at sea, high-rise buildings experience the effect of external factors. So, let me tell you about the technological breakthrough in this area.

The Lakhta Center has a geomonitoring system with thousands of sensors transmitting real-time data on the state of all underground structures of the complex. There is a GNSS station on the pinnacle that transmits the data on the position of the tower spire during its wind-induced oscillations.

All high-rise buildings sway during strong winds. The Lakhta Center’s spire top sways by up to 30 centimeters. In comparison, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, at its height of 828 meters, sways by up to 1.2 meters, and the Federation Tower of the Moscow International Business Center, at 374 meters, sways by up to 70 centimeters.

As we know, the spires of the Peter and Paul Cathedral and the Admiralty have experienced lightning strikes many times. Most supertall buildings encounter lightning strikes several dozens of times a year. Such strikes have zero influence on them, because all skyscrapers have lightning protection systems. At the Lakhta Center, this system consists of an air terminal, a lightning protection wire and grounding; that’s why it is called the passive or classic protection system. The spire and the outer steel elements of the facade receive the electric discharge; then it is transferred to the columns via special current conductors and flows down through the steel elements of the piles deep underground.

And now let’s sit on a swing and feel the wind gusts.

From this point, you can perfectly see the chapel lighthouse which is directly related to the Peter the Great Saves the Drowning near Lakhta monument we have already told you about. But first, let’s touch upon another famous monument the history of which is inextricably linked with this place.

The Bronze Horseman is a monument to Peter I. But the fact is, people at that time understood that it was also a monument to Catherine the Great, who ascended the throne through a palace coup and needed an ideological foundation to support her reign. To achieve that, she wanted to create a direct link between her and the founder of the city. Catherine knew that a monument designed by Carlo Bartolomeo Rastrelli, the father of the architect of the Winter Palace, was already completed and waiting to be erected. But she needed a monument of her own.

Denis Diderot, who was in constant communication with the empress, suggested Étienne Maurice Falconet as the sculptor, although the latter had been known for pastoral figurines and pretty angels. For the French sculptor, it was a chance to reach a new level in his art, and he didn’t miss the chance. But the statue needed a pedestal. And the right pedestal was found in Lakhta. Legend has it that a strong lightning once hit the Thunder Stone, hence its name. Peasant Semyon Vishnyakov who found the stone was given a reward of 100 rubles, which was a tremendous sum of money at the time.

At first, the shaping of the colossal stone commenced in its original location, but when Catherine came to Lakhta, she decided that the stone would better suit the architectural concept if left uncut. The stone was brought to the sea using tracks with spheres inserted into them. Then it was loaded on a special flat-bottomed vessel, which is called “belyana”, and it was tugged by two sailing cargo ships.

Near the Senate Square, piles had been driven into the bottom of the Neva River, and the vessel was submerged to sit on the piles, so that its cargo could be moved to the embankment. The stone lay on the shore for 12 years before becoming the pedestal for the statue. It became a fashion among the locals to make cufflinks, brooches and cane knobs out of the fragments of the stone.

When the monument was unveiled, one could see an inscription in Russian and Latin on it that read: “Catherine the Second to Peter the First.” This way, the empress achieved her goal: from then on, the monumental propaganda was working to strengthen the idea that she was the rightful heir to the throne.

As regards the chapel, it is a replica of the cast-iron chapel consecrated on the day when St. Peter’s Church was founded in Lakhta. Initially, it was located here on the coast, in the legendary place where Peter I saved drowning sailors. A memorable pine was planted near that place, but the tree was killed by the flooding in 1924. The chapel was demolished at about the same time. It was not earlier than the 21st century that it was restored on the pier of the yacht club. The newly-built chapel is one of the final locations of the large walking area formed by the Lakhta Center embankments. As you could already notice, the embankment area is in a natural way divided into two parts: the long South Promenade running along the coast of the Gulf of Finland and the broad East Embankment facing the Lakhta harbor and connected to the main entrance to the complex. The embankments help create a single pedestrian area at the Lakhta Center and add the finishing touch to the architectural ensemble seen from the sea.

A bicycle lane of about one kilometer is running along the coast. It will be connected to the existing cycling and walking routes, for instance, those near the Flagshtock public space, via the Southern ramp leading to Savushkina Street. The bike lane is accompanied by a roller-skating track.

And we are moving on to the panoramic terrace, the final point of our tour.

A single fact will suffice to gain some understanding of Peter the Great’s character. The Great Northern War began in 1700 and finished only in 1721. Accordingly, during all that time, the land we are standing on was de jure Swedish territory. However, the transfer of the capital from Moscow to St. Petersburg started as early as 1712. A decision like this required not only an iron will, but also the readiness to accept risks.

We still do not always realize that our city came to existence from an impetus of just a single person, who made everything not thanks to, but in spite of the circumstances. In early 18th century, Peter the Great was able to put together an effective management team, engage leading experts from different countries and introduce innovations in his homeland through the use of the most advanced practices in various areas, from construction to book printing. Initially, Vasilyevsky Island was meant to be the city center. So, just in front of the Twelve Colleges building, the Kollezhskaya square was laid out in the island’s spit. The square later gave place to the Clinical Obstetrics Imperial Institute named after Dmitry Ott. But then the city center shifted to the left bank of the Neva River.

The next attempt to change its place was taken in the 1930s, when the design development works began for Moscow Square with the grandiose House of Soviets. However, those plans were thwarted by the Great Patriotic War.

Today, the historical center of St. Petersburg is Palace Square with the adjacent areas. But at the same time, we are witnessing a phenomenon similar to that observed in Paris. A separate district of La Défense, which is translated as “defense,” was created in the capital of France as the place for all modern high-rise buildings, thus also becoming a new business activity cluster. The name of the district has a double meaning: on the one hand, it is indeed located at the western defense frontier of Paris, but, on the other hand, it helps keep intact the city’s historical architectural ensemble.

The same case is observed here. This is not just a skyscraper surrounded by several buildings. I know I have already mentioned it, but let me repeat that this place will become one of the main attraction points for both locals and tourists.

After all, Peter the Great built St. Petersburg to secure Russia’s approach to the sea. However, an easy approach to the sea is something hard to imagine for both the tsar’s contemporaries and today’s city residents. The way to the sea is blocked by highways, industrial buildings and sea ports.

The Lakhta Center has become a powerful development impetus for the coast of the Gulf of Finland. New embankments have already appeared near the complex, and Gazprom has initiated and started the urban landscaping works on the coastline stretching from the Gazprom Arena stadium to the Lakhta Center.

This district has already become a new landmark of the Northern Capital. The complex of buildings will gradually fill with life, and a new modern center will appear right before our eyes.

And now it’s time for us to say goodbye. I wish you many nice walks, beautiful photos and great impressions. I’m tour guide Pavel Peretz. See you!