Destruction of Tartu

Fearing that Charles XII would march through Livonia toward Moscow, Peter I ordered Tartu to be made useless to the Swedes. In 1708 the remaining townspeople were deported to Vologda and other Russian towns, and the fortifications were blown up and the town burned. Tartu lay almost empty for several years; the deportees were allowed to return only after the war. Little of the medieval and Swedish town survived, which is why central Tartu today is mostly 18th- and 19th-century.