Saturday: St. Pete's Overview, St. Peter and Paul Fortress, The Hermitage

The train arrived at the station just prior to 6 AM, so we first went to Hotel Belveder-Nevsky to check in and to leave our luggage in the baggage room. The hotel was very central, within walking distance of many of the things we wanted to see. We had breakfast at a cafe across the street from the hotel and then walked down the street to look around.








Just around the block was the Kazan Cathedral , a church dedicated celebrating the victory over Napoleon since prayers there were believed instrumental in defeating Napoleon. During Communist times it was used as a museum of atheism; apparently the primary evidence was that Yuri Gagarin hadn't seen God in outer space.
Next we walked along the canal to the Church of the Spilled Blood.


















The area behind the church was roped off because a movie was being filmed. They had brought all kinds of props including horses and carriages.


















At 9:30 we had a tour of the city. Except for the very Russian Church of the Spilled Blood and the fact that most buildings were painted bright colors to make up for the lack of sun as well as the canals, we could have been in any European city. Many of the buildings are devoted to the arts.

Here are a few of the highlights we drove past:

• Rostral Columns: Built during the time of Peter the Great, these were originally used as lighthouses to guide ships into the St. Petersburg harbor. They had replicas of the prows of ships on them after a Roman custom of putting the prows of conquered ships on columns.
• Naval Museum contains the boat on which Peter the Great learned to sail.

Mikhaylovskiy Castle: Built by Tzar Paul I, this palace was built like a castle complete with moats and drawbridge and a secret underground tunnel to the military partially because Paul liked castles and partially due to his fear of assassination. Ironically Paul was strangled after he had lived there only 40 days. In 1823 it became an engineering school where Fyodor Dostoevsky, the famous writer, graduated.

St. Nicholas Church: This blue and white Gothic church was the only church not closed during Soviet times although the priest had to turn in records of everyone who attended mass. St. Nicholas is the patron saint of travelers and sailors.




















Nicolas I equestrian monument (1859): First statue in world with only 2 support points (the hind legs of the horse) stands in front of a palace he gave to his daughter, the Mariinsky Palace. She didn't like it because the horse had its back to her.

• Astoria Hotel: This is where Hitler planned to have his victory banquet when he had conquered St. Petersburg during World War II. He even had the invitations printed up. Fortunately for the Russian people, he never conquered the city and was unable to use them.

Next we toured the Peter and Paul Fortress, built in 1703 when the city was founded by Peter the great. It was a little hard to see since there was major construction going on everywhere. The fortress is comprised of 6 bastions. It is best known for its prisons which housed Peter the Great's son who was tortured by his father until he died. Much later the prison housed Fyodor Dostoevsky who was lined up to be shot as a political prisoner because he belonged to a liberal intellectual group. At the last second, a horseman rode up announcing that Tzar Nicolas I had decided to sentence him to 4 years of hard labor at a Siberian prison camp instead. The prisons were still undergoing reconstruction, so we were only able to walk past them.







































We saw a replica of the yacht given to Peter the Great by the English king,













and we also toured the Peter and Paul Cathedral.



















In a Russian Orthodox Church, everyone stands during the entire service, even the tsar, but the tsar got a special canopy to stand under.






















































All but 2 of the tzars beginning with Peter the Great were interred.






Nicolas II, the last tzar, and his family have been recently moved here from Siberia.














By this time we were starving, so we ate pies for lunch at the Stolle Cafe. The dough tasted similar to challah bread. We ordered meat (ground beef seasoned with nutmeg), mushroom , apple, cheese (as in cheesecake), and berry.



General Staff building which is on the other side of Dvortsovaya Square, the square in front of the winter palace aka Hermitage








The Alexander Column is in the middle of Dvortsovaya Square.
































In the afternoon we toured the Hermitage Museum. Because we were there off season, it wasn't crowded at all. The Hermitage is a collection of several buildings, the most important of which is the Winter Palace which used to be the official residence of the tzars. Catherine the Great began the collection, naming it the hermitage since "only the mice and I can admire all this."






















































































































This is a full sized sleigh, not a miniature.















































































The highlight was the room full of Rembrandt pictures and the Leonardo da Vinci pictures, 2 of the 8 existing in the world.