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Fort Alexander, also Fort Alexander I, or Plague Fort is a naval fortress on an artificial island in the Gulf of Finland near St. Petersburg and Kronstadt. In 1899–1917, the fort housed a research laboratory on plague and other bacterial diseases.FoundationSince the formation of Saint Petersburg in 1703, the waterways in the Gulf of Finland were of strategic importance for Russia. Peter I initiated the construction of forts in the Gulf of Finland and directed the foundation of the first military installation on the island of Kotlin, Fort Kronshlot, in 1704. Throughout the following two centuries, Russia continued to fortify the area.Louis Barthelemy Carbonnier d'Arsit de Gragnac (aka Lev Lvovich Carbonnier) drafted the initial blueprint for Fort Alexander. Earlier, he had planned the 1827 reconstruction of another military installation in the Gulf of Finland, Fort Citadel (later Fort Peter I). Upon Carbonnier's death in 1836, Jean Antoine Maurice (aka Moris Gugovich Destrem), a Russian military engineer of French origin, revised the plan for a new fort. The construction began in 1838 and under the supervision of another Russian military engineer, Mikhail von der Veide. The builders drove 5535 piles, each 12-meters long, into the sea bed to reinforce the ground. They then covered the piles with a layer of sand, a layer of concrete blocks, and a layer of granite slabs. The brickwork of the fort received granite face-work. Emperor Nikolay I officially commissioned the fort on 27 July 1845; the fort was named to honor his brother, Emperor Alexander I.
