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Due to the German origins of the name "Saint Petersburg", its name was changed to the more Russian-sounding "Petrograd" in 1914 in the wake of World War I. The city has undergone several name changes since its founding. During World War II, the city was besieged by the Wehrmacht for 872 days, resulting in more than a million of civilian losses, mainly from starvation. The significance of Saint Petersburg has declined somewhat after the transfer of the Russian capital to Moscow in 1918, but this allowed its cityscape to remain largely intact to this day. Many world-famous artists, scientists, writers and composers, such as Mendeleev, Dostoevsky and Tchaikovsky, lived and worked here. As the capital of the Russian Empire from the early 18th century to the early 20th century, the city grew steadily, saw many crucial events of the Russian history, and was a major cultural center. Pre-planned rather than spontaneous almost from the very beginning, the city, called by Peter "my window on Europe", was designed to look European rather than Russian, and many European architects were invited to work here. Saint Petersburg was built by Peter the Great in 1703 on the Neva river, amidst the land he had just conquered from Sweden, outside the area populated then by the Russian people. Very little visited, this area hosts historical gunpowder factories, a few beautiful churches and parks, the Ice Palace hockey arena and the Ladozhsky Train Station. In the 1930s the Soviet authorities planned to move the city center to the south. Many attractions which in other cities would qualify as "must-see", such as the Narva Triumphal Arch, Chesme Church and Pulkovo Observatory, are scattered across it, particularly in the quarters closer to the central boroughs. A former industrial borough, it was the place of strikes preceding the revolution of 1917, and the scene of the siege of Leningrad during WWII. Underestimated by most visitors, this area boasts gorgeous industrial architecture and magnificent Stalinist buildings. There are some notable landmarks scattered across it, such as the Academy of Forestry with its park, Military Medical Academy, Polytechnical University and Buddhist Datsan, particularly in the quarters closer to the central boroughs, but otherwise there is little to see there. Mostly an urban commuter area of monotonous and often ugly Soviet-era apartment blocks. The islands of its northwestern part have been a recreational area covered mostly by parks, villas and sports facilities. It hosts the site where the city was founded in 1703 and includes the Peter and Paul Fortress dating back to the first half of the 18th century, but the rest of the borough was mostly built over in the late 19th-early 20th century and is rich in notable architectural monuments of that period. The more western parts have been gradually developed since 1850. Many examples of the 18th century architecture as well as the famous early 19th-century ensemble of the Spit of the Vasilievsky Island are there.
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It includes the Hermitage Museum and the main avenue of the city, Nevsky Prospekt, and is full of architectural monuments of the late 18th-19th centuries.īriefly contemplated as the city center around the 1720s and hosting the seaport from the 1730s through the mid-19th century, the eastern part of the Vasilievsky Island has long been the center of the city's academic life.
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This area between the Neva in the north and the Obvodny Canal in the south and crossed by the Fontanka and Moika rivers has hosted the center of Saint Petersburg since the 1730s. 4.3.3 From the Baltics and other cities in Europe.