Twelve Collegia, ladies and gents — the first Alma Mater of yours truly👸🏼

Wow, #selfisolation is getting the best of us all by the look of it, hey. Running several projects, though from home (but it doesn’t make it easier cause 5pm easily turns into 6, then 7, 8, 9… anyhow🙈) at a time doesn’t seem to marry well with… h̶a̶v̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶l̶i̶f̶e̶ editing pictures and looking for cool stories😅

Anyway, this beauty right up there is now home for St. Petersburg State University, though 300 yrs ago used to be the building of the Imperial Russia’s government kinda thing (1732–1802: like, that’s a lot🤷🏻‍♀️ #justsaying).

Then in 1804 it was transformed into the Higher School of Education, and then in 1835, finally, became my uni. Construction took 20 damn years, man 1722–1742.

Here – so you can get an idea of where we’re in here😉 That’s, like, the very centre of the city.

Architect: yeah I wouldn’t expect to see a Russian last name in this field — 300 yrs ago was probably the most fruitful time for foreigners to be defining what the country (or at least it’s main symbols) was to look like. I mean, I defs wouldn’t try doing that here now😅

So yeah —an Italian, Domenico Trezzini (even though he was always saying he was an ethnic Swiss, we know where your roots were from, Domenico👀✋) and a German Theodor Schwertfeger started the whole thing, and then the nephew of the former, Giuseppe Trezzini, and Mikhail Zemtsov finished it.

Style: look, Peter the Great established the whole town, hence he had an idea of what it was supposed to look like, hence all the main buildings were built in the style he created for it.

Left to right: Zemtsov © and Peter the Dope😁

Petrine Baroque is the name of it. I know — arrogance much?😅 Nah, jokes — to be honest, very classy look. Lots was derived from Swedish and Dutch architecture of the time, which was waaaay more modes than the then Russian architecture🙈

Some of the examples: 1. The Saints Peter and Paul Cathedral © by Dominico Trezzini exists as it was originally designed — the most notable example of the style., 2. Grand Peterhof Palace by Bartolomeo Rastrelli – probs the greatest project ever created in the country © Alex Fedorov, Wikimedia Commons, 3. The main building of the Grand Menshikovsky Palace close to St. P. © Alex Fedorov, Wikimedia Commons.

There’s a bit of a story behind the name ‘12 Collegia’ (it wouldn’t end up on this page if there wasn’t one — ya know what I’m saying😁).

Peter I the Great founded St.P. in 1703, moved the capital over there from Moscow, westernised the country, liquidated the old state bodies, and replaced them with the new ones, which were housed in the building of the twelve collegia.

Collegium (singular from ‘collegia’) was literally the name for a ministry. So yeah — he created 12 new ministries and they were all located in this building.

And together they all formed a Senate (like a government). This was German and Swiss system, where Peter travelled just before founding St.P. (AND he was the first Russian emperor to travel outside of the country! Yeah right wow O_o) cause he was legit sick of all the old school traditions and just wanted a breath of fresh air. Plus he was a young bloke — only 31 when St.P. was established — so he needed some novelty in the way the country was ruled. To be frank, ‘some’ is the last word to describe that novelty cause he revolutionised the government and made it central replacing the one that was horribly fragmented and, well, decentralised🤷🏻‍♀️

Idk, it’s easy to judge, but, to be honest, now we’ve got an over centralised system which limits the way local governments do their jobs (or better read — don’t do their jobs)… anyway, that was a history lesson, not a political science one (believe me you, I’ve had enough of those over 6 years of undergrad and postgrad studies, you don’t want that🙈).

– Julia xx