The history of St Petersburg began with the laying down of the Peter and Paul Fortress on Zayachy Island on 16 May 1703, and Peter the Great himself drew up the plan of the fortifications. In 1712 a stone cathedral named in honour of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul was laid down there to a design by the architect Domenico Trezzini; the building had a high bell-tower surmounted by a sharply pointed spire. The silhouette of the Cathedral of Saint Peter and Saint Paul rising up above the fortress walls and the waters of the Neva became one of the city’s visiting cards. Up to the 1917 revolution the fortress served in particular as the main political prison.

Mayr Johann

Mayr (de Mayr, von Mayr, Mayer, Meyer), Johann Georg
1760, Nuremberg (Germany) - 1816, St Petersburg
Painter, draughtsman, landscapist, portraitist, il¬lustrator, engraver. Elder brother of the draughts-man and engraver Johann Christoph Mayr. Studied in Nuremberg. Invited to St Petersburg (1778). Worked atthe Imperial Academyof Sciences, draw¬ing inventions and texts , turning sketches into finished drawings for copper engraving, correct¬ing new engravings and teaching drawing, engrav¬ing and watercolour painting. Awarded more du¬
ties and students following the appointment of Princess Ekaterina Dashkova as director of the Im¬perial Academy of Sciences (1783). Painted en¬gravings made by other artists (from 1788).