310th anniversary of St. Petersburg: revived history in the Presidential Library’s collections

May 27, the day of the 310th anniversary of the foundation of St. Petersburg, the Presidential Library published on its website a unique collection. It's titled "St. Petersburg: pages of history" and includes dozens of unique digitized books about the city on the Neva that are now generally accessible.

Among them - the first description of St. Petersburg in Russian in 1794 addressed to the compatriots. The preface says that the previous descriptions, published in German, of the city and surrounding areas "were intended mainly to foreigners." The book is called "Description of the Russian imperial capital city of St. Petersburg" and includes a detailed account of the geographical location, history, and even climate of the imperial capital, its bridges, streets, squares and gardens, liturgical, medical institutions, popular amusements. This is a fundamental work of almost 700 pages. The same collection on the 310th anniversary of the city presents the "Guide to St. Petersburg" dating to 1886. It indicates not only the sights, but also provides detailed information about the train stations, hotels, and tenement houses, restaurants, cabarets (indicating those to be avoided). There are also recommendations on how to talk to coachmen and porters, and other useful tips. "Walk with the children in St. Petersburg and the surrounding area" of 1838 is another rarity of the digital collection of the Presidential Library. It tells about the city for children, proposes the best routes to learn about St. Petersburg. The Presidential Library has also digitized and posted on the website the Charter of the capital city of Saint Petersburg of 1798; the same resource features the current Charter of the Northern capital.

The library will continue to disclose unique books about St. Petersburg. One of the volumes to be available on the resource of the first national digital library in the country will be a book with original drawings by Auguste Montferrand about the construction of Alexander Column on the Palace Square: from the storage of granite to the construction. The outstanding architect described all the steps of this unique engineering operation. It is planned to digitize this rare book and make it available on the website to users by 2014 – the year of the 200th anniversary of Alexander Column.