Peter the Great
While the Poles fought the Swedes, Peter founded the city of Saint Petersburg in 1703, in Ingermanland (a province of the Swedish Empire that he had captured). It was named after his patron saint Saint Peter. He forbade the building of stone edifices outside Saint Petersburg, which he intended to become Russia's capital, so that all stonemasons could participate in the construction of the new city. Between 1713 and 1728 and in 1732–1918, Saint Petersburg was the capital of imperial Russia.
Landmarks of Saint Petersburg
St Petersburg Buddhist temple was the first in Europe. Construction was funded by subscriptions of the Dalai Lama and Russian and Mongolian Buddhists; the structure was inaugurated in the presence of Itigilov in 1914 and served as a valuable resource to transient Buryats, Kalmyks and other Buddhists during World War I. It did not function from 1935 to 1991, when the lamas were exiled to gulags, and the temple and its grounds were used for secular purposes. In 1991 the St. Petersburg datsan was reopened for worship.