St Petersburg – A Traveling Fool

After lunch during our full day in Saint Petersburg, we paid a visit to the Hermitage Museum. The museum was founded by Catherine the Great in 1764 and was opened to the public in 1852.

The main building in which the museum now resides began life as the Winter Palace – the official residence of the Russian Emperors (Czars or Tsars) from 1732 to 1917. The original Hermitage was built to the side of the palace and was expanded to include the palace after the Russian Revolution. It now encompasses six buildings. Although the second largest museum in the world (the largest being the Louvre in Paris), only a fraction of the entire collection is on permanent display.

The entrance was through the Winter Palace. Several of the State Rooms of the palace were incorporated into the museum pretty much intact from when they were being used as State Rooms. After entering the palace portion of the museum, we encountered the Grand Staircase, a room with large papier mache chandeliers, the Small Throne Room and the Armorial Hall (aka the Gold Room). The Gold Room was gilded in real gold.

By the time we got to the 1812 Gallery (a hall dedicated to the War of 1812) the building gradually became less of a palace and more of a museum. I have included here more of the photos that I took of the expanse of rooms instead of photos of specific pieces of art. Some of the most famous paintings, such as the two by Leonardo da Vinci, were behind glass, making them difficult to photograph decently. They had loads of paintings by Rembrandt and Rubens as well as the Italian Renaissance artists.

There were rooms with tapestries and beautiful furniture and sculptures. There were a lot of items made from malachite (a green mineral that looks kind of like green marble), which is prevalent in Russia. On the third floor they had room after room of paintings by French Impressionists such as Pissarro, Monet, Sisley, Degas, Renoir, etc. Then there were the Egyptian and Classical antiquities, prehistoric art, jewelry and decorative arts (including a platter with a real snake incorporated into the design), a Knights’ Hall full of armor, German, Swiss, British and French fine art, Russian art, and on and on – even some modern art.

After exploring the heck out of this museum, we went outside and sat by the river to recover before heading back to the hotel to get ready for that evening’s entertainment. We were going to dinner and a show at the Nikoleavsky Palace. The palace was built in the early 1800s for the Grand Duke Nicholas (son of Czar Nicholas I). The Grand Duke was neither especially handsome nor particularly bright. He ended up squandering his money on mistresses and mortgaged the palace. He then went mad from cancer that had spread to his brain. His former palace was gorgeous, however, and the show was of Russian folk dancing. The food was served buffet style.

The next day we explored some more of the city. Along the Fontanki River, we saw (and I photographed) some soldiers. If the country had still been the Soviet Union, I wouldn’t have dared taken that photo.

Along the Nevsky Prospect, the main street of St Petersburg, we saw a statue of Catherine the Great with the Alexandrinsky Theatre behind her. The theatre was opened in 1832 for dramatic, ballet and opera performances. Also in the area were St Catherine’s Church, the Kazan Cathedral, and Stroganov Palace.

We took one last drive along the Neva River to say goodbye to the Winter Palace & the Hermitage, the Marble Palace (which was built by Count Grigory Orlov, a favorite of Catherine the Great, in 1768), the Saviour Transfiguration Cathedral, and a statue of a Roman Soldier before heading for the part of the city that was developed when it was known as Petrograd on our way out of St Petersburg.

After a drive in the Russian countryside, we left Russia (which was much, much easier than entering it had been) and crossed over into Finland.

Next time – Helsinki, Finland and the overnight ferry to Sweden.

Winter Palace
Palace Square
Hermitage Entrance
Grand Staircase
Papier Mache Chandelier
Small Throne Room
Armorial Hall (Gold Room)
1812 Gallery
Malachite Room
Another Gallery
Snake Platter
Nikoleavsky Palace
Folk Dancing
More of the Show
Soldiers
Catherine the Great Statue
Canal next to Hermitage
Marble Palace
Old Petrograd

The three biggest reasons why I chose the Baltics tour were: 1) Denmark – from which my mother’s father’s parents came, 2) Latvia – from which one of my sister-in-law’s parents came, and 3) St Petersburg – just because it was St Petersburg. Back in the 1980s, my mom had gone to Moscow, St Petersburg and Kiev with a church group. It was still the Soviet Union at that time. But it wouldn’t be too many years before the dissolution in 1991.

Founded by Peter the Great in 1703, St Petersburg was the capitol of Imperial Russia. The capitol was moved to Moscow in 1918 after renaming St Petersburg as Petrograd in 1914. Then, in 1924, Petrograd was renamed Leningrad. The name went back to St Petersburg in 1991 at the time of the dissolution of the Soviet Union. So, when Mom visited, it was called Leningrad.

She had been taken to Lenin’s tomb when she was there. By the time I got there, he had been buried. I took a photo of a Subway Sandwich shop to show her how much had changed since she was there. However, not everything had changed.

Before leaving for the trip, I had to purchase an entry visa for $400. This involved filling out a voluminous form with much more information than I felt that they needed. They asked for the address of every place I had ever lived my entire life. For every place I ever worked my entire life, they wanted the name of the company, the address, the name of my boss, and what I did there. They also wanted the name, address, and years of attendance for every school. At the University level, they wanted what I had majored in as well. I did the best I could and then had a photo taken without me smiling. They didn’t want anyone smiling in the accompanying photo. I guess being happy was not an option.

On the Estonian side of the border, things took barely any time at all. If we had blinked, we would have missed that side of the border. The Russian side was another matter.

Only a handful of us were from the US. The rest were from the UK, Australia, New Zealand and Canada. However, they parked us over to the side and kept us waiting for hours while they let several other buses and tour coaches through. Despite all of the forms filled out to get the entrance visa, we had many more forms to fill out. Then we needed to be interviewed one by one.

Drug sniffing dogs were sent through the coach while bomb detectors and cameras were slipped under the coach. Our luggage was all removed and we had to open it for inspection. As we completed our inspections and interviews, we were sent into a room where we were watched over by armed guards until we were all done. Then they had us sit there for a while longer before we could get back on our coach. In the meantime, we ate the bag lunches that Andrej had purchased for us before leaving Estonia. Obviously this was just their modus operandi.

Also, while waiting, we adjusted our watches due to Russia not participating in Daylight Savings Time. At that point, we were nine hours ahead of Minneapolis. By comparison, London is six hours ahead of Minneapolis. We adjusted our watches several times on this trip.

After reaching Saint Petersburg, we were given a basic tour of most of the main sites of the city. Our only stop was at St Isaac’s Square. There we could see St Isaac’s Cathedral, Mariinsky Palace, and an equestrian statue of Czar Nicholas I in the center.

Dedicated to St Isaac of Dalmatia, the cathedral was a museum during the years of the Soviet Union. It has since been restored as a cathedral. The Mariinsky Palace was built by Nicholas I for his daughter and her husband as a wedding gift and is located directly across the square from St Isaac’s Cathedral.

St Petersburg had lots of people dressed in 18^th century Imperial Russia costumes at various historic sites throughout the city. We encountered our first one at St Isaac’s Square. Since she was the most elaborately costumed, I have included the photo I took of her.

We headed from the square to our hotel and dinner. We started the next day with the Spit of Vasilyevsky Island. The Kunstkammer was the first museum in Russia and was founded by Peter the Great in 1727. It was essentially a “cabinet of curiosities”. The most gruesome exhibit was and still is the severed head of the brother of a former mistress of Peter the Great who had been executed for embezzlement.

A pair of Rostral columns, originating in Grecian and Roman times to celebrate a military or naval victory, stood not far from the museum in front of the former stock exchange (the Borse). The island also contained an Academy of Sciences, a Naval Academy and the Cruiser Aurora.

The Aurora was built in 1900 and saw service in the Russo-Japanese War and World War I. By World War II, it was used as a training ship. After the war, it was permanently moored on the Neva River and turned into a museum ship. During World War I, one of the first events of the Bolshevik Revolution was a mutiny that took place onboard the Aurora.

The Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood was built on the spot where Czar Alexander II was blown to bits in 1881. It was gorgeous and everything that an ornate Russian Orthodox Church should be. The interior contained more mosaics than any other church in the world, so the church has been used as a mosaics museum.

Our last visit before lunch was to the Peter and Paul Fortress, which was the original citadel created by Peter the Great in 1703. There was a mint, a prison, and a mausoleum for non-reigning Romanovs. The mausoleum was created because the Cathedral was getting too full of tombs.

Before visiting the Cathedral, we looked at a statue of Peter the Great. The statue was considered to be an accurate portrayal. The Czar was about six feet eight in height, but was not in proportion for his height. His hands, feet, shoulders and head were all smaller than they should have been.

Inside of the Peter and Paul Cathedral, which was definitely crowded, we saw loads of tombs, including Peter the Great, Catherine I (his wife), Elizabeth I (his daughter), and Catherine II the Great (his other daughter). A special room with the remains of Czar Nicholas II and his family was set to the side. DNA tests had been performed on the remains they found and all – the Czar, his wife, Alix, and their children, Olga, Tatiana, Maria, Anastasia, and Alexei – were properly identified and interred.

The remains of Alexander II were in a rose-colored tomb with his wife next to him in a black tomb. The newest tomb (other than the memorial to Nicholas II and his family) contained Nicholas II’s mother. A quartet of men did some acapella singing in a side chapel.

Lunch was a cruise on the Neva River. En route to the boat, we passed the Admiralty, an equestrian statue of Peter the Great, and a couple of Egyptian statues. Periodically during lunch, I had to take a break from the food (which included borscht) to take photos of what we were passing. Smolny Cathedral, which was attached to a convent, and Kresty Prison, which began life in the 1730s as a wine warehouse and later converted to a prison, rebuilt and expanded, were two of the buildings we saw from the river that we hadn’t seen during other trips around town. During the Soviet era, Kresty Prison became notoriously overcrowded with ten times the number of prisoners for which it was designed. We could also see a statue of Lenin in front of the rail station.

Next time – more of St Petersburg, including the Winter Palace/ Hermitage Museum.