here is because of one man-- czar peter the great. 300 years ago, he chose this location on the neva river delta to build an entire new city. palaces and churches, boulevards, a shipyard roseut of the swamp. st. petersburg is a remarkable and amazing city. when peter the great selected this isolated site, it didn't seem to have a chance of surviving. but he wanted to find a place and provideoth an outside port forussia so thaeuropeanization of his country could begin in earnest. it was the only way he cou see to reay modernize russia, and he succeeded. st. tersburg became the cultural center and the catal right up to the time of the revolution. narrator: after the 1917 revolution, st. petersburg was renamed leningrad, after the new leader, lenin. he moved the capital to moscow and decided the cultural heart of russia would instead become an industrial center. then, in 1989, the soviet era ended. st. petersburg regained its original name. since then, russia has gone through a wrenching transition from the old communist system to the new free-market enomy. the changes in this city of five mi