In 1703 Peter the Great founded a settlement on the grounds of the captured Swedish fortress of Nyenskans and dedicated it to Saint Peter, calling it Petrograd. Ten years later he granted Petrograd the title of Russian capital, but after his death in 1725 his new city gradually fell into decline. In 1728 the Imperial Court left back to Moscow. Not for long, though, because in 1730 Peter's niece Anna became the empress of Russia, she liked Petrograd better and had made it once again the country's capital by 1732. This time, for good, until the communist revolution of 1917. Petrograd flourished all those years and decades. Peter the Great himself had only limited opportunity to model the city to his wish, like the large capital cities of Western Europe, such as Vienna and Paris. But that was amply taken care of afterwards, when the German princess Sophie von Anhalt-Zerbst came to Russia by marriage and eventually ascended the imperial throne as Catherina the Great in 1762. She reigned until 1796, enough time to flood the city, her Petrograd, with dozens of neoclassical buildings, overwhelming the Baroque structures for which an earlier empress, Elisabeth, had shown an obvious preference. In October 1917 the tsarist monarchy was liquidated, and one can take this actually quite literally. The capital of Russia moved to Moscow again, and Petrograd became Leningrad. A city named after the person who had deliberately stripped it of its flair and importance. However, when in 1991 the Soviet Union imploded and Leningrad rebecame Saint Petersburg, the flair rapidly rebounced. Moscow remained the capital, but no other city than Saint Petersburg could as vividly tell the story of a Russia which the Soviets had wanted to be socially, politically and religiously forgotten, a story of resilience reflected in its palaces, churches, broad avenues, rivers and canals, charming, appealing and magic. Charming, appealing and magic, that is what this city is indeed.