The White Arbor was opened just before the celebration a bicentenial of the battle of Poltava on June 27th 1909. This monument was erected on the spot of Podolsky watchtower and bastion of the former fortress of Poltava. The fortress was not protected by stonewalls but only by earthworks, palisades and the steep slopes of the hill where it was built.

The day after the battle of Poltava, Peter I ordered the burial of the dead officers and soldiers in two separate graves close to each other. All Russian regiments were drawn up close to the graves to pay their last respect to the fallen warriors. After the service for the dead a big burial hill on the top of the common grave was raised.

The fortress of Poltava with its earthworks, ditch and palisade was built in 1609 by Cossacks of the Mirgorod Regiment, headed by Polish Crown Hetman Stanislav Jolkevsky. Being situated on the top of a hill, overlooking the right bank of the River Vorskla, the fortress was protected mostly by steep slopes that surrounded it to the east, south and north.

In 1999 a large collection of photos taken on the Poltava battlefield were found in the War Archives in Stockholm (Krigsarkivet). Later it was learned that these photos were taken by two Swedish officers: Karl Bennedich and Frey Rydeberg, who visited Poltava in summer 1911. They visited Poltava by order of the General Staff of the Swedish Army and their objective was to discover main burial places of Swedish warriors that were killed in the battle of Poltava and mark them on the map.

A monument above the common grave of Russian warriors killed in the battle of Poltava was opened on June 27th in presence the Emperor Alexander III. However, the heavy granite cross started to sink. In 1906 a decision to open the common grave of Russian warriors, reinforce the foundation of the memorial and built an inner chapel with spherical vault was made.