The State Hermitage Museum: Children and Education

St. Petersburg was built as a seaport. Russia desperately needed both military and trading fleets in order to conduct trading and defend its sea borders. The Admiralty Wharfs were built on the left bank of the Neva. Every day Peter I would inspect how the shipbuilding was coming along. The tsar was an advanced craftsman. Possibly Poseidon himself, the god of the waters, was observing the work of the carpenter-tsar, and helped him create his mighty fleet on the banks of the Baltic Sea.