CITY LEGENDS

Foundation of the city

On May, 16th, 1703 during survey of island Eni -saari, Peter, suddenly having stopped, cut out two layers of turf, has put them crosswisely and told: "Here to be to a city". Then he has started to dig a ditch in which have put a stone box.

Then the box have covered with a stone plate with an inscription: "From Jesus Christ embodiment of 1703 of May 16, the reigning town St.-Petersburg are based by a great sovereign the tsar and grand duke Peter Alekseevich, the autocrat All-Russia". At this time there was an eagle in the air and began to soar over the tsar.

On a place of a bookmark of a city Peter has established a kind of similarity of gate with a crossbeam. The undertaken eagle has fallen on a crossbeam. Peter took it, has planted on a hand and has entered into a city not existing yet.

The military spring of 1703 at last has brought a long-awaited victory to Russia. After a number of the severe defeats, almost pressed to continent, clinging to it desperately, drown in bogs and being lost in woods, Peter, practically on one enthusiasm, seizes the Swedish fortress Nienschanz.

However Peter refuses to be fixed in Nienschanz as he consider that the last "is small, far from the sea, and the place not much is strong from nature".

The tzar's choice has fallen to conveniently located Hare island (Eni-saari in Finnish).

Even not artificially strengthened, the island represented a natural barrier in a mouth of Neva. And the fortress has been put there. Further, under its protection there was a city on the next (Berezovyi) Birch island.

Peter was not present at the foundation. About it tells Stolpjansky one of the largest experts on Petersburg. However, some modern researchers build a logic constructions as proof of the return.

But anyhow in national consciousness Peter was the city founder, and it was fixed in the form of a legend.

The eagle as the messenger of gods and a force symbol in mythologies of various nations of the world should confirm a divine origin of the tsar and its city.

It was much more important than the unbiased fact that eagles never appear over Neva.

Source: Sindalovski N.A. "Legends of St.Petersburg"