and almost not developed. Buildings appeared only closer to the monastery, where land was allotted "in a line along the promising road" for the workers and employees of the monastery. The construction of the avenue did not end there. In 1723, Peter I ordered to 'lay' the road from the cathedral church to the Admiralty in a prospective way. The road was supposed to abut against the vertical dominant – Trinity Cathedral of the Alexander Nevsky Monastery. For a number of reasons, it was not possible to realize this idea – the cathedral did not become a dominant feature and the road was not straightened. The idea of straightening the street was returned in the 1730s and the route was drawn along modern Goncharnaya and Telezhnaya streets. The original section of the avenue was given the name Staro-Nevsky. Later in 1760s the two directions were merged and Nevsky Prospekt got its modern look. After a four-year stay in Moscow, in 1732 the courtyard of Anna Ioannovna returned to St Petersburg. For this event, the avenue was renovated and two triumphal arches were built on it (one at the Anichkov Bridge at the entrance to the city, the other at the bridge across the Moika), the event itself was quite pompous. The construction of the first large stone buildings began. The most significant of them was the Church of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, erected in 1733–1737 according to the project Mikhail Zemtsov on the site of the park in front of the current Kazan Cathedral. The temple was a rectangular building stretched along the avenue, similar in composition to Peter and Paul Cathedral. On the opposite side, in 1730, the Lutheran Church of St Peter appeared, located in the depths of the site. Two symmetrical residential buildings (which have not survived to this day) overlooked the avenue. All buildings on the shady side of the early 18th century were destroyed in the fire of 1736. Mytny Dvor caught fire, then the flame spread to the neighboring wooden buildings. The fire raged for several hours, as a result, several quarters of philistine wooden houses near the Admiralty burned down. The second fire happened a year later, destroying most of the buildings in the center of St Petersburg. After that, according to the Commission on the St Petersburg Building, wooden houses on Nevsky were no longer built. The Neva perspective