Fun things to do in Gorod Sankt-Peterburg

4 more images

Saint Isaac's Cathedral in is the largest cathedral in the city and was the largest church in Russia when it was built (101.5 meters high).
It was dedicated to Saint Isaac of Dalmatia, a patron saint of Peter the Great who had been born on the feast day of that saint.
Long before this lavishly decorated building was opened to the public in 1858, St. Isaacs' already had a most unusual history.

Peter the Great first commissioned a wooden church on the meadow at the side of the Admiralty in St. Petersburg during 1710. Peter named it after a Byzantine monk St. Isaac of Dalmatia, as he was born on St. Isaac's feast day according to the Orthodox calendar. However, this first church was too close to the river bank and was soon destroyed in floods.
…

Most of the external construction was complete by 1842, then another sixteen years were spent decorating the interior before the grand opening in 1858.
Basically the edifice of this Cathedral is in the form of a cross (95m x 105m), crowned with a magnificent central ribbed dome that is gilded with over 100 kg of pure gold. The structure is almost entirely built from granite and marble, shipped from Vyborg which was then in Finland.
houses the altar, has three oval windows under its portico. Main entrances are situated in both the northern and southern wings under porticos of double rows of eight highly polished monolithic red granite pillars, almost 18m high and over 2m in diameter. These Corinthian columns weigh 114 tons each and they are set in bronze plinths which are complemented by being topped with similarly bronzed caps. The eastern and western porticos are similar but smaller and have 8 columns apiece.
The building has 112 columns in total.

This is the fourth tallest cathedral in the world after St. Peter's in Rome, St. Paul's in London and the Santa Maria del Flore in Florence and visit to St. Isaac's would not be complete without paying the extra few Rubles and climbing the 262 steps of the spiral staircase to the colonnade walkway. This public gallery is about 43 m above ground and offers a magnificent panoramic view of central St. Petersburg.

4 more images

For the last years I wanted to visit St.Petersburg and see how the city has changed after my last visit (it was before break-up of Soviet Union) unfortunately I didn't have chance to do so and this August I finally realised my dream. I went there with my sister for the long weekend.
My dream was just walk in streets and breathe this air which reminds me about history, art and music. My favorite musician is from this city ;-)
Luckily the city center is quite compact and easy to walk through. The weather was not very welcoming but still walking on the Nevskiy prospekt, crossing all canals, watching the buildings was very enjoyable.

4 more images

Today, there are 342 bridges over canals and rivers of various sizes, styles and constructions, built at different periods. Some of them are small pedestrian bridges, such as Bank and Lion bridges, others are huge transport arteries such as almost one kilometer long Alexander Nevsky Bridge. There are about 800 small bridges across hundreds of smaller ponds and lakes in public parks and gardens, and over 100 bridges in various ports, marinas, yacht clubs and private industries. The total number of bridges in St. Petersburg is over a thousand.
The nearly 100-meter-wide Blue Bridge, claimed to be the widest in the world, spans the Moyka River.

Peter the Great was designing the city as another Amsterdam and Venice, with canals instead of streets and citizens skillful in sailing.

A familiar view of St. Petersburg is a drawbridge across the Neva. Every night during the navigation period from April to November, 22 bridges across Neva and main canals are drawn to let ships pass in and out of the Baltic Sea into the Volga-Baltic waterway system.
A calculated schedule with precise time of consecutive opening and closing for each bridge is maintained to guarantee passage of cargo ships and tankers at a precisely controlled speed, in order to have at least one bridge at a time staying connected to ensure passage for firefighters, police, ambulances and other ground transportation.

When you visiting St. Peterburg, you must to see this breathtaking spectacle - drawing bridges . It is the big show, what hundreds of people are going to see.

Timetable of bridge opening:
Palace Bridge - 1:35-2:55 am, 3:15- 4:50 am
Alexander Nevsky Bridge - 2:20-5:05 am
Bolsheokhtinsky Bridge - 2:00-5:00 am
Finlyandsky Bridge - 2:30-5:10 am
Liteiny Bridge - 1:50-4:40 am
Troitsky Bridge - 1:50-4:50 am
Lieutenant Schmidt Bridge - 1:40-4:45 am
Birzhevoy Bridge - 2:10-4:50 am
Volodarsky Bridge - 2-3:45 am, 4:15-5:45 am
Sampsonievsky Bridge - 2:10-2:45 am, 3:20-4:25 am
Grenadersky Bridge - 2:45-3:45 am, 4:20-4:50 am
Kantemirovsky Bridge - 2:45-3:45 am, 4:20-4:50 am

The navigation period lasts from May 5 till November 20 and all the bridges spanning the Neva River are drawn letting the big steamers and ships pass through the delta of the river into Ladoga Lake. Sampsonievsky, Grenadersky, Kantemirovsky, Ushakovsky, Kamennoostrovsky, Krestovsky, Lazarevsky and Bolshoi Petrovsky bridges are only drawn as necessity arises.

Timetable drawn the bridges on the website (only in russian)

4 more images

The State Hermitage Museum is one of the largest museums in the world, with 3 million works of art and one of the oldest art galleries and museums of human history and culture in the world.
The vast Hermitage collections are displayed in six buildings, the main one being the Winter Palace which used to be the official residence of the Russian Tsars.
The Hermitage holds the Guinness World Record as having the world's largest collection of paintings.
There were represented Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Rubens, van Dyck, Rembrandt, Poussin, Rodin, Monet, Renoir, van Gogh, Gauguin, Picasso, Matisse and more others.

There are several more collections - the Russian imperial regalia, an assortment of Faberge jewellery, and the largest existing collection of ancient gold from Eastern Europe and Western Asia.

Open:
Tuesdays - Saturdays
10.30 - 17.00
Sundays
10.30 - 16.00
Closed Mondays
Ticket windows shut one hour before the museum closes

Price:
For all other categories of visitors - 350 rubles
children, students, members of ICOM - free
first Thursday of every month - free
foreign citizens working in institutions accredited on the territory of Russia - 100 rubles (proof - permission for permanent residence on the territory of Russia issued by the RF Ministry of Internal Affairs)
Photography and video filming:
Ticket for the right to take amateur photos - 100 rubles
Ticket to take amateur videos - 350 rubles

3 more images

In my trip to St. Petersburg I were met the funny public toilets.

From the time of USSR (Soviet Union) I remember, that the toilet culture in Russia isn't the excellent but I really was surprised, when I was saw the toilet-buses beside the Palace Square, near the Winter Palace (Hermitage).
The Russia doesn't stop to amaze me ...

In here some examples on my photos.

4 more images

The Bronze Horseman (literally "The Copper Horseman") is an equestrian statue of Peter the Great by Étienne Maurice Falconet. The statue is now one of the symbols of Saint Petersburg, in much the same way that the Statue of Liberty is a symbol of New York City.
The statue's pedestal is the enormous Thunder Stone, sometimes claimed to be the largest stone ever moved by man.

The Monument to Nicholas I is a bronze equestrian monument of Nicholas I of Russia on St Isaac's Square (in front of Saint Isaac's Cathedral) . Unveiled on June 25, 1859, the statue was a technical wonder of its time; it spans six meters and was the first equestrian statue in the world with merely two support points (the rear hoofs of the horse).

Smolny Cathedral of Resurrection (Voskresensky), located on Ploschad Rastrelli, on the bank of the River Neva in Saint Petersburg, Russia, consists of a Cathedral (sobor) and a complex of buildings surrounding it, originally intended for a convent.
Construction on the complex was begun as a Russian Orthodox monastery for nuns.
Today, Smolny Cathedral is used primarily as a concert hall and the surrounding convent buildings house various offices and government institutions.

Kunstkammer was the first museum in Russia. It was established by Peter the Great on the Neva Riverfront facing the Winter Palace. Peter's museum was dedicated to preserving "natural and human curiosities and rarities". The tsar's personal collection, originally stored in the Summer Palace, features a large assortment of human and animal fetuses with anatomical deficiencies, which Peter had seen in 1697 visiting Frederick Ruysch and Levinus Vincent. Some of the most gruesome exhibits are the heads of Catherine I's lover Willem Mons and his sister Anna Mons, still preserved in alcohol.

The Aurora is a Russian protected cruiser, currently preserved as a museum ship. She became a symbol of the Communist Revolution in Russia.

4 more images

Palace Square, connecting Nevsky Prospekt with Palace Bridge leading to Vasilievsky Island, is the central city square of St Petersburg and of the former Russian Empire. It was the setting of many events of world-wide significance, including the Bloody Sunday in 1905 and the October Revolution of 1917.

The earliest and most celebrated building on the square is the baroque white-and-azure Winter Palace of Russian tsars (1754-62), which gave the square its name.

The opposite, southern side of the square was designed in the shape of an arc by George von Velten in the late 18th century. These plans were executed half a century later, when Alexander I of Russia envisaged the square as a vast monument to the Russian victory over Napoleon and commissioned Carlo Rossi to design the bow-shaped Empire-style building of the General Staff (1819-21), which centers on a double triumphal arch crowned with a Roman quadriga.

The eastern side of the square is occupied by Alessandro Brullo's building of the Guards Corps Headquarters (1837-43). The western side, however, opens towards Admiralty Square, thus making the Palace Square a vital part of the grand suite of St Petersburg squares.

The centre of the square is marked with the Alexander Column (1830-34), designed by Auguste de Montferrand. This red granite column (the tallest of its kind in the world) is 47,5 metres high and weighs some 500-600 tons. It is set so well that no attachment to the base is needed.
Column is topped with a statue of an angel (6 m) holding a cross (the face of the angel is said to be modeled on the face of Emperor Alexander I).
It is a terrific feat of engineering that this enormous column, was erected in under 2 hours without the aid of modern cranes and engineering machines.

2 more images

Nevsky Prospekt is the main street in the city of St Petersburg.

Planned by Peter the Great as beginning the road to Novgorod and Moscow, the avenue runs from the Admiralty to the Moscow Railway Station and, after making a turn at Vosstaniya Square, to the Alexander Nevsky Lavra.

The chief sights include the Rastrelliesque Stroganov Palace, the huge neoclassical Kazan Cathedral, the Art Nouveau Bookhouse (Dom Knigi), half a dozen 18th-century churches, a monument to Catherine the Great, an enormous 18th-century shopping mall, a mid-19th-century department store, Grand Hotel Europe, the Russian National Library, and the Anichkov Bridge with its horse statues.

The Nevsky today functions as the main thoroughfare in Saint Petersburg. The majority of the city's shopping and nightlife, as well as the most expensive apartments, are located on or right off of the Nevsky Prospekt.

The Prospekt has five Metro stations along its length, with each having its own unique identity.