When Peter was supervising the construction of the Peter and Paul Fortress in 1703, he lived in a 3-room wooden cottage erected in just three days. To create a city from a swamp, Peter conscripted 40,000 laborers to lay foundations and dig canals; he then ordered 1,500 leading families to build homes there. Seven decades later, Catherine the Great, who had married Peter's half-wit grandson and then wrested the throne from him, ordered the cottage enclosed by a stone building for preservation.