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Abstract: Interesting depictions of the “Capital of the North” from the early years of its foundation by Peter the Great in 1703 are housed in the Russian National Library. A careful study of these representations, extremely stimulating for their historic and iconographic content, has made it possible to furnish a detailed contribution to the vast cartographic repertory by different generations of European artists. These graphic renditions also provide a basis for the understanding of the exceptionality of both St. Petersburg’s urban plan and of those individual buildings depicted. A detailed study of seven watercolor painted lithographs by I. Agafonov portraying the city in significant phases of its development – during the reigns of the czar Peter the Great, Anna Ivanovna, Catherine II, Alexander I and Nicholas I – has made it possible to outline the framework of the urban development of this absolutist court between the eighteenth and nineteenth century.