Red Canal (Russian: Красный канал, romanized: Krasny kanal) was an eighteenth-century waterway in Saint Petersburg. Built between 1711 and 1719, it was part of a series of canals dug to improve the drainage of the marshy areas of the city. The canal was one of two connecting the Moyka River and the Neva River in the area of what is now the Field of Mars. Opened in the presence of Peter the Great and Tsarina Catherine in 1719, the canal became a popular site for the nobility to construct large townhouses. By the 1770s the canal was no longer required for its original purpose, and with the expansion of buildings across the Neva embankment, the canal was filled in. A stone bridge built over the canal in 1768 was transferred to the Winter Canal, and survives today as the First Winter Bridge.