In this same year he founded a Battle Abbey in thanksgiving for his victories, although he fully realised the need for reducing the extremely large number of monks that Russia contained. This convent helps one to realise how well Peter came to understand the people that he ruled. If the new city was really to be the capital of this pious land, something of old Russia, of Holy Russia, must be brought into its midst. Most fortunately for Peter's plans it chanced that as early as 1241 a Russian general had gotten the surname of Nevski from a victory he gained over a Swedish army on the banks of the Neva; he had also become one of the most venerated of Russian saints. Thus the enshrining of his relics in the cloister church brought to St. Petersburg one of the holiest things in all the land. Venerable associations that meant much to the devout were secured to the brand new town. The very ornate silver shrine stands at present in the south transept of the church or cathedral which was erected for Catherine II. by a Russian architect named Staroff.[142] The peace that broods over this quiet cloister rather reminds one of the south of Europe. The picturesque convent buildings of yellow and bluish-white plaster are seen among gardens and trees, while over them appear the towers and dome of the cathedral and the steeples of the smaller chapels, in one of which Suworof is at rest. Across a placid canal is the burial ground of the monks. Even in Russia these men are famous for the beauty with which they sing the daily offices of the church, unaccompanied by any kind of instrument--for such is never allowed in buildings of the Communion of the East. A roadway cut straight through the forest between this convent and the Admiralty formed the beginning of the chief street of the present day city, the well-known Nevski Prospect. The Admiralty stands on the Neva side where Peter built his first boat on the Baltic; it forms the chief centre of the city, to which many of the streets converge. The building in some ways is one of the best in the city, erected in the Renaissance style by a Russian architect named Zucharoff. A ship in full sail forms a vane on the needle spire that rises from a square tower lined with Ionic columns, while the vast building, measuring over 1,300 by 500 feet, is well managed, the long façade being relieved from serious monotony by an imposing gateway in the centre and by the pilastered wings rising much higher than the plainer middle part. Close by is the splendid Winter Palace, another Renaissance building, designed in 1754 by Rastrelli but considerably modified after a fire in 1837.[143] One side faces the river, the other looks on, to the square in which rises the tall monolith column that commemorates Alexander I.--the site of the terrible scenes of January, 1905. By an archway over the street the palace is joined to the Hermitage, which houses one of the finest collections on the earth.[144]