St Petersburg before 1703: what stood on the site?
Peter I’s city plan, an earlier Swedish fortress, and the stages of the Peter and Paul Fortress appear in different records. Together they give a checkable history of the place.
The city plan of 1703
UNESCO's record for the Historic Centre of Saint Petersburg describes a vast urban project begun in 1703 and developed in Baroque and neoclassical phases. The research record logs this as an artifact horizon: the city's documented beginning. UNESCO World Heritage Centre ↗
What was there before
Saint Petersburg's heritage administration identifies Nyenskans, a Swedish fortress on the Okhta cape occupied from 1611 to 1703, with archaeological investigations since 1993. Earlier occupation in the region is real and separately evidenced; it is not the same claim as an earlier city under the present one. Administration of Saint Petersburg ↗
A fortress in phases
The State Museum of the History of St Petersburg records earth-and-timber construction of the Peter and Paul Fortress beginning in May 1703, with later rebuilding in stone. The research record insists those phases not be collapsed into one event. State Museum of the History of St Petersburg ↗
Rebuilding or a buried catastrophe?
Buried lower floors and buried foundations appear in many cities. What would distinguish ordinary ground-level rise, fill, and rebuilding from a catastrophe that buried a city? Name the stratigraphic evidence each explanation predicts.