The city of Peter I grew and flourished with the aid
of the tsar himself, as well as the active support of his assistant
Alexander Menshikov, but primarily by the efforts of the architect Domenico
Trezzini and many other specialists, both Russian and those invited
from abroad. They built ships, fortresses and palaces, created parks
with fountains, clad embankments of rivers and canals in brick, and
built bridges over them. Peter the Great personally supervised the creation
of the new capital of the empire.

