If tourists want to travel to Russia, St. Petersburg is one of the best places for them to visit. The city locates in the northwest part of the country and has many tourist attractions inside it. The number of attractions in St. Petersburg is so high that you need more than just a simple short trip to St. Petersburg to see everything inside it, and even if you manage to see every tourist attraction inside the city of St. Petersburg, there are still loads more in the suburban area. One of the reasons behind the number of attractions in St. Petersburg is that Russia maintains its heritage quite well. You can find several structures and artifacts from ancient to contemporary time in Russian museums; even the tiniest objects have kept well.
St. Petersburg is one of the previous capital cities of Russia, and it's only 300 years old. Peter I had found St. Petersburg in 1703 and moved the capital from Moscow to its newly founded city. When you travel to St. Petersburg, you will notice the attractions that have been preserved from the day one, such as the first-ever structure in St. Petersburg, the Initial Palace of Peter I, The Red Mansion, or as we know it today, The Cabin of Peter the Great.
St. Petersburg is famous for its museums and Russian historical places, and there are lots of St. Petersburg attractive places that you’ll visit on your travel to Russia, but one of the major attractions of St. Petersburg is Cabin of Peter the Great. It was the first building constructed in St. Petersburg in which Peter I would observe the construction of the city and Peter and Paul Fortress.
The first palace for Peter I was located near Trinity Square, and it only took three days for the soldiers of Semyonovskiy Regiment to make it out of hewn pine. Peter I was in love with western culture, and he wanted all the buildings in its capital city to be built out of stone, just like the European ones, but since it was impracticable for him to construct a stone cottage in short time in St. Petersburg, he ordered his soldiers to paint the wooden cabin in red-oil paintings so it would look like bricks.
Peter I had lived in 60 sq. meter cabin for five years from 1703 to 1708, and since it was made to use only during summertime, it didn’t have any fireplace or chimney. This small palace had three rooms, the bedroom, the study room, and the living room. This cabin wasn’t the only one of its kind in Russia, Peter had previously built several more in other cities, but when he moved out of it, he ordered it preserve the cabin for the future as a symbol of his modesty.
The cabin was a bizarre mixture of traditional Russian farmland house called Izba, which was popular in the 17th century, and Dutch Baroque architecture. There was a wooden cannon-ball on top of the structure, indicating the Peter I’s army title, which was artillery captain. It also had a high pyramidal roof with wooden tiles and large sparkling windows all around the small structure.
Inside the cabin, the walls were painted in red-oil, same as outward to resemble bricks. The rooms in the cabin were called Red Chambers because of that unique red color. The Tsar bedroom was small, but the study room and dining room had more space. The windows on both inside and outside had glistening decoratives.
The Cabin of Peter the Great removed from its original site near the Winter Palace and Trinity Square to its present location in 1711. Peter I himself was the first one who attempted to preserve the cabin, he ordered Domenico Trezzini to build a protective structure to be installed on top of the cabin to save it from sun lights, rain, and storms. A brick case was designed in 1844, and two lobbies were added to the brick case later in 1899, the northern one was for tourists who wanted to visit the cabin and the southern one used to accommodating Peter I’s boat. An iron fence installed around the cabin, and a small garden was laid out inside it in the 1870s.
During the Great Patriotic War and Siege of Petrograd, the administrators of the cabin feard that the bombing raid of Nazi troops would damage the cabin, so they closed the recently turned museum cabin of Peter the Great, boarded the windows and doors, covered it in veneer coats, and painted it gray, so it became hidden from the enemy’s sight. It was also the first museum that opened in St. Petersburg after the war.
The Cabin of Peter the Great had undergone a complete restoration to its original plan under the supervision of A. Gessen, who was the supervisor of more than half of the historical places in St. Petersburg in the 1960s.
Currently, Cabin of Peter the Great is a branch of the State Russian Museum. The museum is a memorial of Peter the Great since most of the belongings of Peter I survived, and the structure has remained standing to its original plan and layout to this day. The museum contains uniform and clothes of Peter I; an oriental style cane; a pipe of boxwood, which was a gift from Alexander Menshikov to Peter I; Peter I’s boat, which he made himself and used it to cross the Neva River; A table and armchair made out of pear tree timber, which is believed to be a product of Peter I.
The Cabin of Peter the Great used to marks several significant days in Russian history, including the foundation of St. Petersburg city, and it also became the symbol of Russian heroic labor after the October Revolution. There’s a bust of Peter I’s head outside the cabin, which was made by Russian artists and sculpture Parmen Zabello.
We at the Star Travel Group would suggest this small museum to anyone who wants to learn more about Peter I’s life and see how he lived in a small cottage for about five years at the beginning of founding the St. Petersburg city. You can also visit our weblog to learn more about other Russia attractive places or find our tips about how to travel to Russia. If you have plans to visit this museum as a part of your Russia tour, remember to also visit Peter and Paul Fortress and its attractions, including the Cathedral of St. Peter and Paul and the Trubetskoy Bastion as well since they are significant parts of any St. Petersburg tour plan.
