Although founded by Peter the Great, the city actually takes its name from Peter the Apostle. The Tsar ordered construction of the Peter-and-Paul Fortress in 1703 in a marshy area of the Neva delta to which the Swedes long laid claim. Three years later, he decided to make it his new capital, due to its location as a Baltic port, often free of ice and linked to the rest of the country by canals. The Tsar aimed to modernize the country by giving Russia a "window on the west".

To achieve his goals, Peter had tens of thousands of serfs press-ganged into building the city, often in horrendous conditions. The Tsar wanted to create a European-style stone city, in contrast to the wooden buildings typically found in Russia. He therefore put an Empire-wide ban on stone construction to ensure he could have all the country's stonemasons working on the new project. Churches were to have conventional bell towers rather than the onion-shaped domes typical of Orthodox churches.

In 1712, the country's main institutions were moved to Saint Petersburg. The Tsar forced noble families to move to the city and build homes that matched the new style of construction, at their own expense. By 1714, 50,000 lodgings had already been filled. During the 18th century, the Tsarinas Elisabeth and Catherine II continued the work of their predecessor Peter (including the Winter Palace and Nevsky Prospect) and the city became the country's intellectual capital. Canals, wide avenues and matching architecture in the city center lent the place grandiose appeal. Many starving peasants sought refuge there following the agrarian reform: a number of riots broke out in the city throughout the 19th century. The 1905 and 1917 revolutions saw the rise of Bolshevism: Saint Petersburg lost its status as a capital and was renamed Petrograd, then Leningrad following Lenin's death. The city did not regain the name Saint Petersburg until 1991.