🏛 Annenskiye Fortifications

Выборг, Петровская ул.

The green ramparts and moats of a former fortress, free to stroll across — a quiet corner of old Vyborg.

The fortifications were nicknamed the "Crown of St Anne" — for their crown shape and in honour of Empress Anna Ioannovna.
Construction began to a design by General Coulon under Minich; the moat and the first two bastions were ready by 1733.
In the early 1750s Abram Gannibal — Pushkin's great-grandfather — worked on the construction.
The fortress never saw battle, and in 1864–1865 a road cut it in two — today's Ostrovnaya Street.
The stone escarp wall of granite boulders is 10 m high and 3 m thick, and the whole fortress stretches about a kilometre.
In April 1918, more than 400 Russian-speaking residents of Vyborg were shot in the fortification moats; a stele commemorates them.

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