Welcome to Russian History Retold.

Episode 320, the history of St. Petersburg.

Last time, we covered the history of Russia's present-day capital, Moscow.

Today, we will recount the history of the country's newest major city, St. Petersburg.

But before we get started, I wanted to remind you that I will be speaking at the Intelligent Speech 2005 online conference,

along with some of the greatest history podcasters around.

It will be held on February 8th, and the tickets are only $30 for the full day of amazing topics.

It will be found at intelligent speech online.com.

I'm also going to be doing a panel discussion with two other Russian history

podcasters, Roberto Toro of Tsar power, and J.P.

Bristow of the Russian Empire History podcast.

And we will be talking about Russian propaganda.

So just go to Intelligent Speechonline.com.

You'll see the schedule there.

It's a full day with four different rooms.

You can choose which room and what topic you want to listen to.

It looks incredible, so hope to see you guys there. Now, back to St. Petersburg.

Before the Russians took over the region, a group of Swedish settlers built a fortress, Nyanskans, at the mouth of the Neva River in 1611,

later called Ingramund.

The small town of Nayan grew up around this fort.

The area became settled by a mix of different nationalities,

including Finns, Germans, Estonians, and Russians.

...