Move of the Russian capital to Saint Petersburg
- When
- 1712
- Where
- New Capital
- Episodes
- 1
In 1712, Peter the Great officially relocated the Russian capital from Moscow to Saint Petersburg. This move established the city as the administrative center of the Tsardom and later the Empire, a status it held until 1918, with a brief interruption in the late 1720s.
Episodes
Background and detail
Long-term Status. Saint Petersburg served as the capital of the Tsardom and the Russian Empire from 1712 to 1918. Although Moscow briefly regained the capital status between 1728 and 1730, Saint Petersburg remained the primary political hub. The city became historically associated with the birth of the Russian Empire and Russia's emergence as a European great power.
People involved
- Peter the Great · Tsar of Russia and initiator of the capital move
Sources
- Peter the Great Wikipedia, revision of 2026-09-24
- Saint Petersburg Wikipedia, revision of 2026-09-28
Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.