Peter the Great's Cabin

Peter the Great's Cabin is the first building erected in St Petersburg, serving as the residence of Tsar Peter I from 1703 to 1708. The small wooden house, covering an area of about 60 square metres, was built by soldier-carpenters not far from Trinity Square in just three days — from 13 to 15 May 1703; as early as 16 May the founding of the new city was celebrated here. According to another version, a ready-made Swedish house was used instead, brought from the town of Nyen further up the Neva, complete with the furnishings of a Swedish burgher.

The site chosen for the house was behind the Peter and Paul Fortress, so that its windows commanded views of the open water, the bastions and the surrounding countryside. The log frame was assembled from pine logs hewn in the Swedish manner, and an entrance hall divided the house into two parts. Peter I, wanting the dwelling to look like a stone building, ordered the log walls painted to resemble red brick, the tall roof covered with shingles made to look like tiles, and unusually large windows fitted with small panes. The house had no stoves or chimneys, as the tsar lived there only during the warm months. The roof was decorated with a carved wooden mortar and ornamental "flaming bombs", a reminder that Peter commanded a company of bombardiers in the Preobrazhensky Regiment.

After the tsar moved into the newly built Summer and Winter Palaces, the cabin stood abandoned until 1731, when the first protective stone gallery was built around it. Following the flood of 1777, Catherine II ordered a stone "case" to be built with a roof of sheet iron, completed in 1784. In 1844 the decayed case was dismantled and replaced with a new one — made of sixteen columns with arches — to a design by the architect Roman Kuzmin; in this form the structure has survived to the present day. In 1741–1742, by decree of Elizabeth Petrovna, a chapel dedicated to the icon of the Saviour Not Made by Hands was set up in the house's dining room, housing an icon that, according to tradition, had accompanied Peter on all his campaigns; the chapel was closed in 1930.

A museum opened in the cabin in 1930, and it was granted historical-memorial status in 1938. During the Siege of Leningrad the building was boarded up and camouflaged, but it was still damaged by a blast wave; the damage was quickly repaired, and as early as September 1944 the museum was the first among Leningrad's museums to receive visitors again. Major restoration of the case and scholarly restoration of the log frame were carried out in the 1960s and again in 1971–1975. Today the display holds Peter I's personal belongings, everyday items from the early 18th century and materials on the Great Northern War and the founding of the city; on the embankment beside the house stand statues of mythical Chinese guardian lions (shishi), brought in 1907 from the Chinese city of Jilin (Girin).