Return to Personal The Twelve Colleges by Domenico Trezzini was built in 1722-1742 to house the Imperial Ministries ("Colleges"). The legend has it that Peter the Great wanted the 400-meter-long building to stretch along the Neva River, but Men'shikov, the Governor of St. Petersburg and Peter's close friend, disobeyed his suzerain's orders. The displeased czar's wrath apparently fell upon Men'shikov in the form of a blow from Peter's club. In the early 1800s, the Ministries began moving out of the building, while the Main Pedagogical Institute was moving in in their place. The Institute was reorganized into St. Petersburg Imperial University in 1819. The Department of Mineralogy, founded also in 1819, is behind the row of windows on the second floor from the ground. The two-storey building to the left of the Colleges used to be the University Rector's quarters; it is the place where the Russian symbolist poet Aleksandr Blok was born in 1880.