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About Petrozavodsk
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The city was founded on 11 September 1703 as Petrovskaya Sloboda by Prince Menshikov at the behest of Peter the Great who needed a new iron foundry for manufacturing cannons and anchors for the Baltic Fleet at the time of the Great Northern War. At first the foundry was named Shuysky zavod (literally, "factory at the Shuya River"), but a decade later its name was changed to Petrovsky zavod, after the reigning monarch. From this form the present name of the city derives.
The city has a fine frontage on the Gulf of Petrozavodsk. The modern embankment, inaugurated in 1994, displays an assortment of Karelian granites and marbles. It is lined with extravagant postmodernist sculptures presented by sister cities of Petrozavodsk from around the world. There is also a birch copse, where the first church of Petrozavodsk was built in 1703.
Petrozavodsk is home to the Karelia Philharmonic Orchestra (1933), the Karelian Musical Theatre (1955, statuary by Sergei Konenkov), National Library of Karelia (1959), Finnish-speaking National Theatre of Karelia (1965), Petrozavodsk State University, a conservatory, a city museum founded in 1871, and a branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences.