Personalities of the Petrine Age: 2003

On 25-26 November, 2003, the Menshikov Palace housed a conference celebrating the 300th anniversary of St. Petersburg. Participants were welcomed by Mikhail B. Piotrovsky, Director of the State Hermitage Museum, whose scholars made presentations dealing with the creation of museum exhibitions in the Menshikov Palace, Alexander Menshikov’s architect Francesco Fontana, history of building activities on the Spit of Vasilyevsky Island revealed by the excavations at the Twelve Colleges, authorship of the first German descriptions of St. Petersburg, Deeds of Peter the Great, the Wise Reformer of Russia by I.I. Golikov, draft personnel list made for the Russian Imperial Court by Alexander Menshikov in 1726-27, Synodal Printing House, cartography, D. Fassman’s books on Alexander Menshikov (1730), and the genre of epitaphs and artistic tombstones. Presentations made at the second conference session addressed some aspects of Russian culture and art in the 18th century.

The conference was closed by a concert of organ music.