View from the galley car of the train.
In four hours we were in the heart of what was the capital of Russia and the Romanov Dynasty's home city for three hundred years, and shortly after ensconced in our magnificent hotel, the Grand Hotel Europe.
Silver service breakfast...again.
St Petersburg was Peter the Great's "window on the west" and our first day was dedicated to finding out all about his achievements and his modernisation of Russia technologically, industrially and socially. After visiting Europe and spending time in England he saw that his country was lagging in the areas that made the European nations powerful. He moved the capital from Moscow to an empty swampy region in the north and had a capital city built in 1703. It took nine short years, and at great cost in lives to the poor serfs who were "press ganged" into providing the labour for this mammoth task.
He took inspiration from Amsterdam, which is in a similar setting, and the planning and europeanisation of the city is clearly evident with long wide avenues radiating out from a central point and with beautiful buildings designed by renowned Italian architects lining the boulevards.
It has a long history of development, destruction and change with the WWII 900 day siege of the city probably the most well known. It has been named St Petersburg to Petrograd ( more Russian sounding after WW1) to Leningrad until the 1990s when it returned to its original name ...which the locals seem to prefer.
View across the Neva from the island of the fortress- Hare Island.
Canals, streets and boulevards.
One street we went down was exactly 220 metres long and 22 metres wide and 22 metres high, the ratio to make it look like a hall in a building...and it did. He set up a large navy, he insisted that his noble class wear Western dress and he brought in a "beard tax" to have the populace clean shaven and more like Europeans. I guess he couldn't know that throwing your weight around when you have absolute power would all end in tears for the family a couple of hundred years later.
On our tour of the city we saw where Tchaikovsky and Dostoevsky lived and where Hitler intended to have his Victory Banquet after his Russian campaign.......the Russians are happy to point out that it was a bit "premature". We saw the admiralty and all the fine palaces that lined the canals and River Neva, and where he built the Peter and Paul fortress containing the beautiful cathedral which houses the remains of all the Romanov Czars including Nicholas II. Their history is one of opulence, wealth and power but also of assasination, murder and intrigue.
The entrance to the fortress with the Romaov symbol, the two-headed eagle.
The cathedral in the fortress containing the remains of 300 years of the Romanov Czars
Everything Peter the Great did was on a grand scale....including the cathedral for his family crypts. The spire was camouflaged with grey paint during the siege so that German artillery couldn't use it as a reference point.
We visited the Church on Spilt Blood...built where Tsar Alexander II was assisinated with a bomb (after six attempts over a number of years) and wandered past any number of palaces, museums and theatres in the district of our hotel.
The Church on Spilt Blood.
The interior dome 61 metres high as he was 61 when assassinated and all tiled in mosaics which the Russians love. The detail is very impressive.
Galena, our guide lived through the Stalin era and was not shy about telling us what it was like. She lost family members to Siberia in purges, she lived in a communal apartment with ten other families...and Russians apparently are not friendly to each other... .a hang over form the time of great suspicion. It was difficult to grow up then, no food in the shops...very severe requirements to move around and constant fear of the KGB which she says stands for Kind, Generous and Beautiful!
She showed us where the KGB building was/is where Putin went as a 14 year old to ask how he could become a member of the KGB. The locals say that from that building you can get a "very good view of Siberia!!!" Many who went in never came back. Actually we found that there is a bit of a sense of humour in the Russians....but you have to dig...and it is somewhat black.
There are over 600 palaces in St Petersburg and many of them were pointed out to us during our touring around. But the Winter Palace in the City and the Summer Palace in a small town about 30kms out of the city called Pushkin, after the poet, are the "statements of obscene opulence" we visited and spent many hours exploring with our guide...who took no prisoners in the lines ....or if we "missed" a vital fact or piece of information!
The place itself on a grey cool day. Over 40kms of valuable paintings including Rembrandts, and vast collections of priceless jewels ....as well as a preserved Egyptian mummy over 10,000 years old.
They like colour and gold.......lots and lots and lots of gold!
The view from the balcony overlooking the Parade Square.
These palaces were built by Catherine the Great ( a German princess who had her husband the Czar murdered so she could have the throne) and extended by Elizabeth II her successor who was known as Elizabeth the Spender! (She left only 3 roubles in the treasury when she died)
The Summer Palace is as large but surrounded by acres of gardens and lakes which make the whole town of Pushkin a beautiful park. It has been, and continues to be, restored after the German forces trashed it while they occupied it as a base to shell the city. It really was left as a wreck and the restoration is a credit to Russian persistence, commitment and skills....besides which it is a very popular tourist attraction......cha ching!
The ball room
An entertaining area...one of about 1000 rooms in the palace.
The man made lake.
Hasn't quite got the view of our "Summer House"!
We saw churches and palaces galore. We saw where the last Czar Nicholas II, and his family Alexandra and the daughters and his haemophiliac son retreated to when things were going "south" for the dynasty and the October 1917 revolution was brewing.
Nicholas II, unlike Peter the Great and successors up to him, was a Slavophile and he had this church built in the traditional style for his family to worship in. The trees behind are oaks planted by Nicholas & Alexandra in about 1914.
We saw the district that the mystic "healer" Rasputin lived in and the monastery that he was buried in after he was murdered and dropped in the frozen River Neva. Alexandra wanted him nearby even in death to help her sick son. It must have been a very strange world that the last Royal Romanovs inhabited.
The monastery near the Romanovs where Rasputin was buried. They had to exhume and cremate him as people were coming from all over Russia to steal the earth on his grave as a healing treatment for ailments.
Our senses in Russia have been overloaded to the extreme. Visually, aurally, historically and culturally it has been a wonderful, fleeting visit to this country that Churchill described as " a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma"
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