Coat of Arms, St. Petersburg

Categories / Capital/Heraldry, Symbols of St. Petersburg, State Awards
ST. PETERSBURG COAT OF ARMS, an officially approved heraldic emblem. The first known St. Petersburg coat of arms was on the banner of the St. Petersburg Regiment (1712), and showed a heart on the princely mantle beneath a princely crown. In the 1710s, St. Petersburg was also associated with an emblem picturing a column under the crown bearing a key and a sword positioned crosswise. The current coat of arms was devised in 1724 by a deputy herald-master Count F. Santi. The dark red field of the armorial escutcheon bears a golden sceptre, beneath the sceptre two silver anchors are placed crosswise with their flukes upward, one of which is a sea anchor (its flukes are to the left as the viewer looks at it) and the other a river anchor (with the flukes to the right ). Such an emblem symbolises the location of the capital on the intersection of river and sea routes. This coat of arms was bestowed on St. Petersburg by the decrees of 1730 and 1780. In 1857, a framing was added to the coat of arms to designate St. Petersburg's administrative status; it represented the Imperial Crown over a shield and two sceptres interwoven with an azure ribbon behind the shield. After 1917, the coat of arms was abandoned. On 6 September 1991, it was ratified by the decision of the Presidium of the Leningrad Soviet (as an escutcheon without framing). Three years later the coat of arms was confirmed by the City Charter.

References: Богуславский Г. А. Гербы Петербурга и его частей // БА. 1984. № 16. С. 50-54; Медведев М. Ю. Герб города на Неве // ЛП. 1988. № 8. С. 32-33; Гербы городов России / Н. А. Соболева и др. М., 1998.

G. V. Kalashnikov. Santi Francisco de, Count
Медведев М. Ю. Герб города на Неве // Ленингр. панорама, 1988
Гербы городов России / Н. А. Соболева и др. М., 1998 Leningrad Soviet
1780
1724