SAINT PETERSBURG - 3D Timelapse - 800 to 2026

From a wild marsh on the Neva to a city of 5.6 million — watch Saint Petersburg grow year by year in one continuous 3D flight, from the year 800 to 2026. Viking longships, Swedish fortresses, Peter the Great's new capital, great fires and floods, golden domes and raised bridges, revolution and the 872-day Siege of Leningrad — twelve centuries in five minutes, no narration. Chapters 0:00 Intro 0:10 Before the city: the Neva wilderness, Landskrona and Nyenschantz (800–1702) 0:59 Peter the Great founds Saint Petersburg (1703–1725) 1:40 The imperial capital: fires, floods and the Winter Palace (1737–1782) 2:11 The golden age: Kazan, St Isaac's and the first bridges (1810–1858) 3:07 The tenement boom and Art Nouveau (1880–1907) 3:28 Petrograd: war and revolutions (1914–1924) 3:50 Soviet Leningrad: the 1930s 4:05 The Siege of Leningrad and the post-war city (1941–1975) 4:34 Saint Petersburg again (1991–2026) 5:01 The city today: white nights and raised bridges Which city should we build next? Tell us in the comments! About the film The city is built from real map data: every street, river and building footprint comes from OpenStreetMap, the terrain from Copernicus satellite elevation. Each event and date on screen is checked against two historical sources (Wikipedia EN/RU, Saint Petersburg flood-defence directorate, Presidential Library, city bridges agency and others). Population figures: official estimates and censuses; values marked ≈ are estimates. Credits Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors, available under the Open Database License (openstreetmap.org/copyright). Elevation: Copernicus DEM GLO-30 © DLR e.V. 2010–2014 and © Airbus Defence and Space GmbH 2014–2018, provided under COPERNICUS by the European Union and ESA. 3D city, animation, music and sound effects: original, made for this video. Font: Cormorant SC by Christian Thalmann, SIL Open Font License 1.1. #SaintPetersburg #3DTimelapse #History #Leningrad #PeterTheGreat #CityEvolution