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On the 27th of May, 1703, in the midst of the mist-shrouded marshes of the delta of the Neva River, Tsar Peter the Great made the first symbolic strike into the marshy soil of what would become one of the most grandiose imperial ventures in all European history: the city of Saint Petersburg. The city became a grand declaration of a window onto the West, a reorientation of an empire, and the very physical manifestation of Peter's dream of a new Russia, explains The Historic UK. What emerged from the swamps during the next decades was a sparkling port of palaces, canals, and spires, a city that would rival the great capitals of Europe and function, for two centuries, as