The artists of the lakes have been present in the Grand Principality of Kiev since the twelfth century, where they collaborated on the great factory of the cathedral of Saint Sophia. The second stage is the Renaissance, when the Solari di Verna and the Novi di Lanzo gave a decisive contribution to the reconstruction of the Moscow Kremlin at the time of the foundation of the Tsarist empire. The third stage is the massive and predominant presence of the artists of the lakes in the eighteenth-century invention of the new Russian capital, Saint Petersburg: a work that lasted a century, and ended in the following one with the activity of the Scotti di Laino. There is therefore a sequence of eight centuries, vital to understanding not only art but also history.