The only antiquities of St. Petersburg are the structures connected with the life of the strenuous founder. Peter's cottage, which was erected soon after the works began in 1703, is a large four-roomed, shingle-roof, log-hut; and the living-room which still contains the simple wooden furniture that he used enables one to some extent to picture the backwoods life of the imperial pioneer. The whole is enclosed in a larger structure of brick, and a miracle-eikon is the central feature of the shrine that now occupies the chamber where the great Tsar slept. Never perhaps was Peter so happy as when he was living here. He hated lofty rooms and luxurious furniture and costly food. He liked to wear his oldest clothes and enjoyed working with his own hands. As a great concession to his wife he consented at Catherine's coronation to wear a gold-embroidered coat, but could think of nothing except the fact that its cost would have paid for several soldiers. In Paris he found the luxury of the Louvre absolutely insupportable. After looking impatiently at the sumptuous feast set out, he dined off radishes and bread which he washed down with two glasses of beer. After a contemptuous survey of the superbly fitted French bedrooms, he rested for the night on a camp-bed set up in a closet. Close by the cottage was the small wooden church of the Trinity with two towers and onion domes which Peter built, but which was burned down early in 1913. A picturesque appearance is given to the Neva's northern bank by the old fort with its needle spire of gold that stands on a little island of its own, close to the cottage and Trinity church. Peter's old earth bastions were faced with granite in later days and the east gate is dated 1740. For defending anything whatever the fortress is no more use than the Tower of London, but within are pleasant avenues of trees, and over the roofs of the barracks and other buildings rises the famous Cathedral of SS. Peter and Paul, where rest the city's founder and the later Tsars.[140] A soldiers' city from the very first St. Petersburg has been, and such it is to-day. Troops constantly pass along the streets; sentries with bayonets fixed are to be seen on every hand. The thoroughfares are patrolled by policemen, each armed with baton, revolver and sword. Peter planned to build rather a canal town of Holland than a boulevard city of France. Many of the canals have been filled up, but beside one of those that remain, in the corner of the beautiful Summer Gardens, stands the delightful two-storey house with plaster bas-reliefs and metal roof that Dutch workmen built for Peter; it is known as his palace to-day. The rooms inside, doored and shuttered with panelled oak and partly lined with blue Dutch tiles, have a most cheerful and pleasant character; they contain some rather good carved work that was tooled by the great Tsar; a mirror-case with stag, foliage, birds and other things is signed and dated "Peter. 1710."[141]