FADING BEAUTY...

A GLORIOUS SUNRISE WELCOMES US TO ST PETERSBURG

CHAMBERS OF CURIOSITIES

CURIOUSLY

Three days of Russia, Soviet and Federation history. Different approaches to the same subjects, “we were besieged” usually by the Germans but certainly Napoleon and his armies. “Those that had, really had. And those that did not have, didn’t have anything”.

St Petersburg, (Leningrad and Petrograd), is a city of beauty though a façade. It looks glorious on the outside and overwhelmingly beautiful from a distance. Once you are close you see the many many cracks and how thin the cover over what appears to be a crumbling, disintegrating, ill-maintained set of buildings and culture.

CANAL RIDE

A CRUISE ON THE NEVA RIVER

OUR FIRST GLIMPSE OF ST PETERSBURG FROM THE WATER

BIRTHPLACE OF THE CITY, BURIAL PLACE OF THE ROMANOFF.S

THE HERMITAGE, WINTER PALACE

THE RUSSIAN SENATE

SITE OF THE FORMER SENATE

FORTRESS OF PETER AND PAUL
(former rulers, also the burial site of executed Romanovs)

EMPRESS ELIZABETH'S WINTER PALACE

(for those who care, she is the witch who brought Sophie 

into the family tree to marry her idiot son.  

Sophie became Catherine the Great.)

CHURCH OF THE SPILLED BLOOD

Czar Alexander was murdered in this church. His family made it a memorial to him. Only family members and invited guests were ever able to go inside until the “revolution of 1917”. Now of course, it is open to the public.

AN EVENING AT THE HERMITAGE

Five buildings of art work collected beginning with Alexander the Great. Catherine the Great purchased complete sets of famous artists thus beginning the extensive collection that fills the Hermitage. We had the opportunity to see significant works by Michelangelo, Rembrandt, Titian, and de Vinci.

THE SUMMER PALACE OF CATHERINE THE GREAT.

While under siege, the Palace was emptied and the treasurers were taken to the far mountains and Siberia to hide them from the Germans. The Palace burned to the ground but most of the treasurers were saved. The restoration of the palace began shortly after the war in 1945. It continues to this day. Again the facade is lovely….

BEHIND THE FACADE OF THE BEAUTY OF ST PETERSBURG
LIVE THE PEOPLE

Behind the scenes in the city…

quick images of the deterioration of the city “behind the façade”….as we drive down the back streets, we notice how the people actually live. There are no “homes” in St Petersburg, there are communal flat living and flat living called Stalin Apartments. Which of course looks like projects…but when Stalin built then, it was to provide for free living places for people. Kruschev also built additional Stalin apartments but they were VERY much smaller. There are large shopping stores and a loarge grocery store, but they are out of town. In town people who live in the Stalin apartments shop for all their food and necessities in small shops in the city.