St. Petersburg.

Detailed city plan of St. Petersburg, Russia.

This is a delicately engraved steel plate map of St. Petersburg, Russia. Situated on the Neva River, the city was founded by Tsar Peter the Great in 1703 and quickly became associated with Russia’s military, cultural, and economic rise as a European great power.

The image is centered on the large fortress and lists buildings of note, transportation routes (including roads and canals, but no railroads, which would not appear until 1837), and prominent geographic features. A profile view of the St. Isaac’s (Isakiefskoi) Bridge can be seen in the lower right.

Engraved by Benjamin Reese Davies after William Barnard Clarke and published in London by Baldwin & Cradock on behalf of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge (SDUK). The SDUK was a liberal London organization established in 1826 with the aim of providing inexpensive educational material, including maps, to the increasingly literate public of England. It produced several atlases of impressive detail and quality before shuttering its doors in 1848.