History of Saint Petersburg
Founded by Tsar Peter the Great on 27 May 1703. It became capital of the Russian Empire for more than two hundred years (1712–1728, 1732–1918). St. Petersburg ceased being the capital in 1918 after the Russian Revolution of 1917.
The Bronze Horseman (poem)
St. Petersburg was built by Peter the Great at the beginning of the 18th century, on the swampy shores and islands of the Neva. The difficulties of construction were numerous, but Peter was unperturbed by the expenditure of human life required to fulfil his vision of a city on the coast. Of the artisans whom he compelled to come north to lay the foundations of the city, thousands died of hardship and disease; and the city, in its unnatural location, was at the mercy of terrible floods caused by the breaking-up of the ice of the Lake Ladoga just east of it or- as on the occasion described in the poem- by the west wind blowing back the Neva. There had been one such devastating flood in 1777 and again in 1824, during Pushkin's time and the flood modeled in the poem, and they continue to this day.