Nikolskaya Curtain

The Nikolskaya curtain wall got its name from the Church of St. Nicholas on Mokrushki, to which it faced. The church stood in the middle of a swampy lowland in what is now the Petrograd side. The wooden-earth curtain wall was built in 1703 and rebuilt in stone and brick in 1729-1730. It must be said that converting a wooden-earth fortress into a stone one was not easy. About 40,000 piles had to be driven under the curtains alone. Naturally, manual labor predominated. However, when laying and deepening the Kronverksky Strait, dredgers and horse-powered water pumps were also used. In 1832-1833, the escarp wall of the structure was re-faced with new bricks according to the design of K. I. Opperman. Eighteen casemates of the Nikolskaya curtain were adapted as barracks for the Artillery Company and other garrison units. They housed not the most dangerous Decembrists and Petrashevtsy. Interestingly, only in the Nikolskaya curtain have two-tier casemates been preserved. In all other walls, they were long ago rebuilt into single-tier ones. In the 18th century, the curtain was occupied by the gold and silver separation expedition, as well as the ranks of the commandant's office. In the 19th century, the premises housed the military orphan department, the lower ranks of the fortress Artillery Company, and the lower ranks of the Invalid Company, and later the local fortress team. Additionally, the curtain contained detention rooms. Currently, the left part of the curtain is occupied by the Mint (transferred in 1977 for the purpose of fulfilling the Olympic order), and the right part houses the funds of the Money Museum. It features not only coins, medals, and banknotes but also unique equipment for minting and rolling, as well as rare stamping tools. The location for the museum was chosen deliberately. It was in these casemates, according to Peter I's decree, that new Russian coins began to be minted.

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Photo: Ekaterina Borisova

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