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A system of street lighting was introduced in St Petersburg by Jean-Baptiste-Alexandre Le Blond (1718). The first streetlights were oil lamps in the area around the Winter Palace. Gas streetlights we...
Founded by Empress Elizabeth Petrovna in St Petersburg (1744). First porcelain manufactory in Russia. Russian porcelain was invented by the mining engineer Dmitry Vinogradov, who created the country’...
The factory was originally founded by Pavel Obukhov, Sergei Kudryavtsev and Nikolai Putilov as a steel foundry (1863). It was renamed the Obukhov Factory (1869) and acquired by the crown (1886). One ...
The Triangle Rubber Company opened the Russo-American Rubber Plant on the Obvodny Canal (1860). Until the end of the nineteenth century, the plant had a monopoly on rubber production in Russia. In th...
Founded in Kronstadt on Kotlin Island as a crown iron foundry for the production of artillery shells (1789). Transferred to St Petersburg by Emperor Paul following the decision to move part of the Kr...
Peter the Great transferred the fishermen from the various crown lands to this district near St Petersburg, which became known as Rybnaya Sloboda (1716). The local factory produced the bricks used to...
The Lazarev House (now the Theatre of Musical Comedy) on Italian Street was designed by Yegor Sokolov. Alexander Khrenov reconstructed the building for Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich (1892). The hous...
Vasily Stasov designed the Pompeii Gallery in the Winter Palace in place of small rooms damaged by the fire (1837). Motifs from houses in Pompeii were employed in the interior decor. The murals were ...
The Chapel of the Presentation in the Temple was located in Bartolomeo Francesco Rastrelli ’s Winter Palace (1754–62). Consecrated in January 1768, the interior was badly damaged in the fire (1837). ...
The Obvodny Canal marked the southern boundary of St Petersburg in the early twentieth century. Beyond the canal lay the run-down outskirts, factories, mills and warehouses. The Izmailovsky Army Ware...