St. Petersburg is 300 years old. plus another 400

It is difficult for a Petersburger who, admiring Smolny, crosses the Bolsheokhtinsky Bridge today, to imagine that exactly 700 years ago, on the right bank just before the bridge, on a small cape at the mouth of the Okhta River, stood the Swedish fortified city of Landskrona, which in translation means "crown of the earth"

A year later, the “crown of the earth” was destroyed and burned by the Novgorodians, who considered themselves the original owners of this land, and the Russian town of Nevskoe Ustye arose on the site of the fire. However, the Swedes soon regained the land and built the Nyenschanz fortress on this site, around which the city of Nyen flourished. 300 years ago, the soldiers of Peter I blew up the fortress, burned Nien, the Okhtinskaya Sloboda appeared, and the Okhtinskaya shipyard was built...
The history of the endless redistribution of this long-suffering piece of land ended, at least for today, with the construction of the Askold business center on the site of the shipyard or former Petrozavod. And on April 24, as part of the Swedish week in St. Petersburg, a museum was opened in one of the halls of the business center, which is called: “700 years: Landskrona, Nevskoe Ustye, Nyenschanz.” On the diorama presented in the exhibition you can see the Nyenskans fortress with tiny cannons on the bastions, and the Swedish houses of Nyens with red tiled roofs, and trees lovingly planted by its inhabitants, and a panorama of the autumn marshy Neva bank. Household items discovered relatively recently by archaeologists at the site of Nyen are the pride of the exhibition. These are fragments of stove tiles, kitchen utensils, smoking pipes, a copper ring, coins...
At the opening of the museum, the guests of honor made welcoming speeches reflecting a modern view of the past and present of St. Petersburg. Consul of the Swedish Consulate General in St. Petersburg Stefan Eriksson said that “the Swedes are grateful to Peter I for forcing them to abandon imperial ambitions, as a result of which they began to build their own peaceful state.” The curator of the project, archaeologist Peter Sorokin once again reminded those present that, contrary to the prevailing stereotype, St. Petersburg did not arise from an empty, unsuitable place for life. And the previous 400 years should be added to the history of St. Petersburg... And the chairman of the Committee for preparing the celebration of the 300th anniversary of St. Petersburg, Natalya Batozhok, thanked the creators of the museum for the fact that she “will now have something to report to the governor for the anniversary,” at the same time noting that from now on The center of the city can also be considered a new museum dedicated to the history of Okhta. By the way, entrance to the museum is free...
Last week, Princess Victoria of Sweden visited the museum. She looked at the antiquities with genuine interest, took pictures against the backdrop of the diorama and was the first to sign the Book of Honored Guests. The retinue expressed admiration for how much attention St. Petersburg pays to its “Swedish period.”

Emilia KUNDYSHEVA