The Baltic: a shore that didn't exist

The wind off the gulf here has its own character — a little salty, a little riverlike, as if the water itself can't decide what it wants to be. And that makes sense: the ground you're standing on right now was still the bottom of the Gulf of Finland as recently as the nineteen-sixties.

Look straight ahead. A bronze Peter the Great stands a little apart from you — five and a half metres of metal, nearly thirteen with the dark-red granite pedestal beneath him. The work of sculptor Zurab Tsereteli. But this wasn't his first spot in the city — and that's where the story turns almost detective-like. In two thousand five, the statue went up right in the historic centre, on Manezh Square. The locals' reaction was... let's say restrained. Within a year, on the twenty-fifth of September two thousand six, Peter was quietly moved out here — to the city's sea-facing edge, right by the water. And you know, here he finally landed in the right spot. He looks out toward the horizon. The stronger the wind blows, the more he seems to belong. As if he'd always stood here.

Now, about the shore itself. This whole stretch, from the square down to the water, is landfill from the nineteen-seventies and eighties. The northern tip of Vasilyevsky Island was literally extended: shallow waters were packed in with sand and construction rubble, reclaiming hundreds of metres of land from the sea. The waterfront promenade got its name in December nineteen seventy-two — before the shoreline itself even existed. The name came first, the land came after. Which, if you ask me, is a very Petersburg kind of story: name first, reality later.

The hotel behind you — a long, cascading structure from nineteen seventy-eight — was built as a Soviet-era showpiece for anyone arriving in the city by sea. Cruise liners, foreign delegations — this was the face the city wanted to present to them. The monument to Peter came later, in the post-Soviet years, following its own logic: if a ship is sailing into St. Petersburg from the gulf, who should be standing on shore to greet it? Only the man who built the navy.

If you walk along the waterfront toward the gulf — around the corner of the hotel, closer to the water — you'll find what draws people here in the evenings. A wide, flat expanse of water, a low horizon, and far off, the silhouette of Kronstadt. Watching the sun set over the Gulf of Finland became something of a city ritual precisely because of this landfill: before it existed, watching the sun sink straight into the water was only possible from the outskirts — towns along the southern shore. Now it's a half-hour subway ride from the city centre.

Further along the promenade, look for Baltic Fleet Square — a memorial to the cruiser Kirov, unveiled on the thirtieth of September nineteen ninety. A piece of the memory of the siege of Leningrad, built right into the walking route.

There's one detail easy to walk past. The famous Thunder Stone — the very boulder that the Bronze Horseman statue stands on — was found on the gulf shore back in the eighteenth century and hauled into the city, turning a living shoreline into the base for an imperial monument. Here, Peter stands on a "shore stone" once again — only this time it's cut granite on an artificial shoreline, and the line where city meets water was drawn entirely by engineers. Two monuments, two shorelines, three centuries apart — and the same gesture repeating itself: the city reaching for the sea.

This walk starts right where you're standing. And any other one — anywhere in the world — this same guide can put together for you in a couple of minutes, built from verified facts: just type in a topic. Try, for instance, "the landfill islands of Vasilyevsky Island" — and find out how Leningrad reclaimed this very ground from the sea.

An episode like this takes about two minutes to make: name a topic, and the rest is done for you. moygid dot online.