The Admiralty ship-building shipyards have been put by Peter I on the left coast of Neva in the fall of 1704. The project has been developed by the sovereign and included shipyards, docks, workshops for construction and repair of the ships, and also warehouses for storage of construction materials, ship arms and equipment.

   The first building of the Admiralty which was called at that time "The Admiralty house" represented the one-storey mazankovy case in the form of a letter "P" with the production yard opened to Neva. Several years later in the center of this yard have built the stone case of the Admiralty board, and over him a mazankovy tower with the spike topped with a ship. At the beginning of the 19th century the building has undergone alteration again - there was a need to coordinate his appearance with the ceremonial center of the capital. The talented architect A. D. Zakharov directed works. On his project the grandiose construction consisting of two P-shaped cases has been built. The building has been decorated with the tower surrounded with a colonnade and topped with a dome with a spike. On a spike have established the weather vane in the form of a ship which has become to one of symbols of St. Petersburg. From below the ship seems tiny, but actually it weighs 65 kilograms and is covered with two kilograms of pure gold.
   The building of the Admiralty has been decorated with sculptures which images are connected with legends and myths of sea elements. The sculptural furniture of a tower of the Admiralty includes composition "The nymphs bearing the terrestrial sphere": 28 statues representing four a season, four elements, four main directions of wind and also the goddess Izida - the patroness of shipbuilding and Urania - a muse of astronomy. Twenty two-meter high relief represent the allegorical picture "Fleet Institution in Russia". On corners of an attic of a tower the statues of ancient heroes and commanders cut from a stone have been established: Alexander of Macedon, Pierre, Ajax and Achilles.
   The new building of the Admiralty has subdued contemporaries the grace, faultless proportions and purity of architecture. In such look the Admiralty, apart from minor changes, has remained up to now.
   In 1874 before the building of the Admiralty the Alexander Garden has been discovered. In 1883 in him busts of the Russian writers Nikolay Gogol, Vasily Zhukovsky, Mikhail Lermontov, the composer Mikhail Glinka, and also a monument to the researcher of Central Asia Nikolay Przhevalsky have been established.