This 1820 map of Saint Petersburg Province is from a larger work, Geograficheskii atlas Rossiiskoi imperii, tsarstva Pol'skogo i velikogo kniazhestva Finliandskogo (Geographical atlas of the Russian Empire, the Kingdom of Poland, and the Grand Duchy of Finland), containing 60 maps of the Russian Empire. Compiled and engraved by Colonel V.P. Piadyshev, it reflects the detailed mapping carried out by Russian military cartographers in the first quarter of the 19th century. The map shows population centers (six gradations by size), postal stations, roads (four types), state, provincial and district borders, monasteries, factories and customs houses. Distances are shown in versts, a Russian measure, now no longer used, equal to 1.07 kilometers. Legends and place-names are in Russian and French. For many centuries this region was on the border between the Swedish and Russian Empires. Sweden had asserted claims to this region since at least the 13th century, when the Swedes battled the forces of Alexander Nevsky on the Neva River. In the early 17th century, the Swedish king, Gustav II Adolf, launched a renewed assault on the shores of the eastern Baltic. He established Swedish Ingermanland on the eastern edge of the present-day Gulf of Finland, with a fort, Nyenskans, near the mouth of the Neva River. Peter the Great finally conquered this region from Sweden early in the Great Northern War of 1700−1721. After years of seeking a Russian outlet on the Baltic Sea, Peter built his new capital and “window on the West,” Sankt Pieter Burkh, at the mouth of the Neva River, beginning in 1703. Saint Petersburg became the Imperial Russian capital in 1712, and subsequently a major metropolis filled with the elaborate palaces of the tsars and Russian nobility.