VII International Peter the Great Congress
PETRINE MEMORIALS IN RUSSIA AND EUROPE:
RESEARCH, CONSERVATION, CULTURAL TOURISM
St Petersburg, 5-7 June 2015
The international Congresses of the Towns and Cities of Peter the Great are held
annually in St Petersburg at the time of the tsar’s birthday. Their object is to foster
fundamental research into the Petrine epoch and its heritage, focusing on problems of
the conservation of relics connected with Peter the Great and widening cooperation
between Russian and European scientific, educational and cultural institutions.
The organizers of the congresses are the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation,
the St Petersburg Committee for Culture, the State Hermitage Museum, the Peterhof
State National Park Museum, the St Petersburg History Museum, the Institute for
Cultural Programmes, the Peter the Great Institute, and the Dmitry Likhachev
Foundation.
The Seventh Peter the Great Congress will be devoted to the wide-ranging study of the
phenomenon of monuments and memorials of Peter the Great, and of the problems
connected with their transformation into museums, their protection, restoration, and
inclusion in cultural tourism routes.
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Peter the Great had a strong sense of history and understood its importance in the task of
transforming Russia. He had a historian’s instinct; every authentic fact was valuable for him
as well as an appreciation of the interconnectedness of events. Peter issued a number of
special edicts relating to the collection of data on contemporary events, the search and
preservation of ancient manuscripts. He himself worked on historical papers.
Peter understood the importance of the material, tangible results of human activity. He
established the Kunstkammer – the first museum in Russia where historical rarities and
artefacts were kept alongside natural sciences collections. Peter was also concerned to leave
posterity not only written evidence. We owe to him the preservation of an old cutter boat –
“the grandfather of the Russian navy”, of the Fortuna, a boat from the Pereyaslavl “toy
flotilla”, and of trophies from the battle of Poltava. In this way the foundations of Peter the
Great’s “memory-bank” were laid.
Peter is very much alive today. He is not only an outstanding figure from the distant past, not
only the founder of St Petersburg. He belongs to the whole of Russia: from Solovki to
Derbent, from Novgorod and Smolensk to Vladivostok, from Kaliningrad to Biysk.
The eventful Petrine epoch, covering the last quarter of the 17th century and first quarter of the
18th, , has left us a vast number of memorial objects and monuments connected with the name
and activities of Peter the First and his associates.
These include palace-and-park ensembles, monuments of civil, ecclesiastical and industrial
architecture, achievements in engineering and fortification, sculptures, memorial plaques,
historical grave and archeological sites, places of historical interest, toponymic memorials.
The list of Petrine memorials also include objects created in 18-21th centuries in
commemoration of the people and events of the Petrine epoch.
The memory of Peter also lives on outside Russia. There are hundreds of Petrine landmarks –
palaces and royal residences visited by Peter, scientific institutions and wharfs, battlefields of
the Northern War – to be found on the territory of European states. Their careful preservation
demonstrates international recognition of his importance.
The Congress organizers welcome presentations dedicated not only to separate Petrine
landmarks and memorials but rather and primarily, to the analysis of their origins, to problems
relating to their study and conservation, both in Russia and in Europe. We also welcome
contributions to the history of museum collections of Petrine artefacts and to the mounting of
exhibitions about the history of the Petrine epoch. Presentations that seek to widen the very
concept of the ‘Petrine monument’ would be of great interest.
A major aspect of the Congress is exploring questions dealing with the present-day life of
Petrine memorials, their preservation and restoration, their transformation into museums, and
their inclusion in cultural tourism routes.
The following topics are proposed:
 Memorial objects and landmarks connected with the name and activities of Peter the
First and his associates: the date of, and reasons for the creation, their local resonance
and their vicissitudes
 Architecture of the Petrine epoch: ensembles and monuments, problems of research,
their current state
 Memorials and memorial sites from Petrine military history: battlefields, fortresses,
monuments
 Archeological memorials and necropolises of the Petrine epoch
 Problems of the preservation, restoration and museum status of Petrine memorials
 Museums and collections of Petrine artefacts as ‘reminders’ of the Petrine period
 Peter and his time in the visual arts
 Petrine toponymy, official and popular
 ‘The Petrine Myth’ and its reflection in Russian and European monuments and
memorials
 New monuments to Peter: why did they appear, who commissioned them, who
conceived them
 Petrine monuments and memorials and cultural tourism: itineraries, guidebooks,
electronic aides
The Organizing Committee:
Tele +7 812 272 91 43; tele/fax +7 812 272 29 12
petr@lfond.spb.ru