2869 RUSSIA (Leningrad Oblast) - Palace and Park Ensemble of the Town of Gatchina and its Historical Centre - part of Historic Centre of Saint Petersburg and Related Groups of Monuments (UNESCO WHS)

Gatchina is a town located 45km south of Saint Petersburg by the road leading to Pskov. It was first documented in 1499 as a village (Khotchino) in possession of Novgorod the Great. In the 17th century it passed to Livonia, then to Sweden, and was returned to Russia during the Great Northern War. In 1708, it was given by Peter the Great to his sister Natalya Alexeyevna, and after her death, Peter founded an Imperial Hospital and Apothecary here.

2859 RUSSIA (Leningrad Oblast) - Z Geodetic Point in Hogland - part of Struve Geodetic Arc (UNESCO WHS)

The Struve Geodetic Arc is a chain of survey triangulations stretching from Hammerfest in Norway to the Black Sea (designated an UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2005), about which I wrote here. Two of the geodetic points are located in Russia, both, i.e. Maki-Paalys Point and Z Point, on the small Hogland Island in the Gulf of Finland, at about 180 km west from Saint Petersburg and 35 km from the coast of Finland. The two points were established on the hill Mäkiinpäällys in 1826, and in memory of the historic event, here were placed two memorial plaque.

RUSSIA (Saint Petersburg / Leningrad Oblast) - Historic Centre of Saint Petersburg and Related Groups of Monuments (UNESCO WHS)

According to European criteria, Saint Petersburg, the most western city of Russia, is a young city, in 2003 celebrating "only" 300 years since Peter the Great built it from nothing into a region newly conquered from the Swedish, at the mouth of the Neva River, in a inhospitable coastal area of the Gulf of Finland. Built by conscripted peasants from all over the Empire (but mainly Estonians and Finnish), whom joined russian soldiers, but also Swedish and Ottoman prisoners of war, and aimed at fulfilling the ambitions of Peter to transform Russia into a modern European country, Saint Petersburg became the capital of the Empire in 1712.