ABSTRACT
Pyotr Ivanovich Sevastianov was one of Russia's most distinguished travellers and collectors of Christian antiquities in the nineteenth century.! Born in 1811 in the town of Krasnoslobodsk in Penza province, he was a son of Ivan M. Sevastianov, a merchant of the first guild and an honorary citizen. Pyotr was first educated at home, with the participation of M. M. Speransky. In 1822 he was sent to Staff Captain I. I. Galushka's Moscow boarding school for sons of the gentry. From 1826 to 1830 he studied at a law faculty of Moscow University, obtaining a candidate's degree in moral-political sciences. For the next twenty years, from 1831 to 1851, Pyotr Sevastianov worked as a lawyer, in the Caucasus (1833-36), in Moscow (1836-38) and in St Petersburg (1838-51), rising to the rank of actual state councillor. During this time he travelled extensively in Russia, mostly in the south, and in the Caucasus, Georgia in particular. In 1840 he made his first long-awaited journey abroad.
