St. Petersburg - General Impressions
The sky unbroken by high rises, pierced only by church and golden spires, beckons the visitor to explore the wide streets and even wider canals of the city. St. Petersburg bubbles with life as it easily merges old with new. Peter the Great’s efforts to create an imperial urban presence out of marshland has proven to be highly successful. While the court is gone, the architecture and grandeur remain. Most of the inner city has been very tastefully renovated since the massive destruction during WWII, when it was devastated during the Nazi occupation, and through Stalin’s bombing campaign as he didn’t want the Nazis to stage celebratory events at the Petershof, about 20 km down the coast. The signs of the War are now all gone, as is the drabness of the Soviet era. There are only a few rundown dilapidated buildings, including former palaces and theaters, which currently line the back streets and canals. In the inner city many of the houses have been recently painted in light and bright hues. Stones and brick have been sandblasted so that the city shines. The sense of pride the citizens have for their city shows in that there is no litter and almost no graffiti in the main areas. Those who call this city home, have reason to be proud of it; the streets, taverns, houses, and waterways have inspired the writings of Dostoyevski, Pushkin and Nabokov to name just a few and the visual, auditory, and kinetic imagery of artists, composers and choreographers ever since Peter built the first palace on the banks of the Neva River in the early 18th C. Ballet and opera are housed in a number of different theaters, the most famous of which is the Mariinsky, which in addition to the original theater now has a modern one, across the canal from the old one, with reputably some of the best acoustics in a theater in the world. The Romanovs considered this northern region their own personal property and they sponsored artists, art and architecture to grace their city. They were definitely into collecting, starting with the artworks that Catherine the Great brought to her court when she acquired 250 pieces from a Prussian silk merchant, Johann Ernst Gotzkowsky, in Berlin. Not long thereafter the collection grew so large that a new building was needed to house it. So began the Hermitage, which is now a complex of five buildings. Whenever the opportunity arose, palaces and estates from deceased, exiled, or impoverished individuals were taken back to the imperial fold and many of these palaces are now excellent state run museums. The Marble Palace, for example, built by Catherine the Great for Prince Orlov, who never had the chance to live there as he died before it was completed, returned to Catherine’s possession and is now the home of an eclectic exhibition of modern art, which stands in diametric opposition to the classical beauty of the grey toned marble throughout the palace which frames copies of Greek and Roman statuary. In addition to the refined polished marble throughout the palace, there are inlaid wooden floors with a variety of pictorial and graphic designs. Two of the floors in the main rooms just beyond the marble staircase have multicolored oak designs, complete with red berries and green leaves; the artistry involved in creating these floors is phenomenal.
Peter the Great was a navigator and sailor in spirit as well as action. This is evident in the layout of his city, which follows a grid pattern with the main arteries leading from the central focal point of the Admiralskaya on the Neva River like spokes on the helmsman’s wheel. The paved spokes are broken only by the intermittent canals which meander throughout the city, giving it its nickname, the Venice of the North. As with everything in Russia, the canals are much wider and longer than anything in the Adriatic island city-state. There are no highrises, the building codes don’t allow anything higher than five floors in the inner city, which makes for a very pleasant skyline. The only edifices which break up the fairly consistent horizontal lines of the river banks are the onion bulb and shaft like church spires, the golden spire on Admiralskaya, and the very large dome of St. Isaac’s Cathedral. On the Gulf of Finland entrance to the city, there is a very different kind of construction, one that looks like an oval silver space ship with rockets pointing upward and somewhat inward; it’s a sports stadium. While the horizontal skyline creates a sense of balance, polyphony occurs in the facades of the buildings, which differ by era as well as general design. Many of which are also painted in different colors, a light green or light blue, or yellow or some with a pinkish hue highlighted by white trim. The overall effect is harmonious and striking.
The city is easily navigable, either by boat through the interconnected canal systems, by metro to the outlying areas or simply by foot in the main sections on either side of the Nevis River. For those with enough time, the Hop on Hop Off bus connects all the major tourist sites on both sides of the river. From May throughout the summer, street musicians, performers, and pedicabs bring entertainment to tourists and natives alike. The large square in front of the Hermitage is home to outdoor concerts ranging in style from classical to heavy metal. Tourists meander through the parks between the Hermitage and St. Isaac’s Cathedral amid strollers and rollerblades; in the Spring the city opens up like a sweet scented blossom inviting everyone to participate in its emergence.
A day’s walk starts by window shopping and stopping in at some of the cafes along Nevsky Prospect, on the way to the four Horse Tamer statues on the corners of the Anichkov Bridge, which symbolize man’s conquest over the wild, which is an appropriate image for this city built out of swamplands, forests and the icy waters of the Bay of Finland. Amid the stores and cafes lining the street, are a number of 18th /early 19thC structures including the Stroganov Palace, which is now only one of the palaces that make up the Russian Museum’s sites around the city. The street is lined with statues of Gogol and St. Catherine as well as a wide variety of churches from many denominations. The most impressive directly on the main street is the awe-inspiring Cathedral of Our Lady of Kazan complex. The icon of Our Lady of Kazan is said to work miracles and the building was built to protect her. During the revolution she somehow made her way to New York from where she was sent to Fatima, Portugal and later to the Vatican. Pope John Paul II then restored her to Russia, where she is officially now in the Annunciation Cathedral of Kazan in the Kremlin. This story is not told in St. Petersburg, where the icon in the church is supposed to be a copy, instead, the St. Petersburg guide relates her story as:
According to the legend in the late 16th century a little girl living in Kazan had a vision of the Virgin Mary who told her to go to a burnt-down house and find an icon in the ashes. An icon of the Virgin Mary was actually found and began to work miracles. In 1612 it accompanied Prince Dmitri Pozharsky’s men when they liberated Moscow from the Poles. After that it was kept in the Moscow Kremlin. In 1710 Peter took it to St Petersburg, and in 1737 it was placed in the Church of the Nativity of the Virgin. When the icon was moved to the new cathedral, the latter was called after it.
The first appearance of this " miraculous" ikon is linked with the conquest of Kazan under Ivan the Terrible, in the sixteenth century, and also with the conversion of the Moslem Kazan Tartars. Sonia Howe, Real Russians
Beyond the icon itself, the entire structure is an amazing work of art and testament to the history of the Russian Orthodox Church. The North Door is a bronze imitation of the Florentine Baptistery doors, but rather than the Renaissance panels the Kazan sections include St. Vladimir (958-1015), the prince who made Russia a Christian country after his conversion in 988, and St. Alexander Nevsky (1221 -1263), who is considered the defender of Russian lands from German and Swedish invaders. The inside of the Cathedral has 56 red granite columns and a mosaic floor. The walls and columns are covered floor to ceiling with vibrant religious paintings.
Not far from the Cathedral is a large modern mall, Gostinyy Dvor, where everything imaginable can be purchased. Across the street from the shopping center are two more churches, one for the Armenian community and the other, St. Catherine’s, the oldest for the Roman Catholic congregation. Continuing up the street is the National Library of Russia, one of the largest in the world and the home of Voltaire’s personal collection, which Catherine bought soon after the philosoph’s death.
The Four Horse Tamer bridge is a crossroads, continuing up the street quite a ways leads to the main train station with the rapid trains to Moscow, but for those staying in the city a left hand turn along the canal leads to the Faberge Museum with an exquisite collection of Faberge eggs, jewelry and icons. Another left at the next bridge leads to the main collection of the Russian Museum with an extensive collection of 13th C icons along with an impressive array of Russian artists from the 16th C to the present. Around the corner from the Russian Museum complex is one of the most ornate churches on the planet, the Church of the Savior on the Blood, also known as the Church on Spilled Blood. The Church was built on the site where Tsar Alexander II was assassinated in 1881 as commemoration for his life and the improvements he made to the Russian people by abolishing serfdom and creating a public education system through university education. The Church was consecrated in 1907, but was never used for daily worship, instead it was reserved for special services for the Tsar, and then only in the area by the mosaic of ‘The Crucifixion’ on the west side. The building was badly destroyed during the Revolution, but the paintings and mosaic floors have been restored to showcase early 20th C Russian religious art from floor to onion domed ceilings.
Heading back towards the Neva leads around curves in the canals to the main art museum in Russia and one of the leading museums in the world, The Hermitage. Similar to the Louvre, there are a number of buildings as part of the imperial complex. And like the Louvre, the museum requires a good three to four days to, even briefly, cover.
When the weather is good it seems a shame to spend time indoors, but the magnificent cathedrals are not to be missed, nor is Peter’s Fort or Catherine’s Museum. Luckily in the summer, the sun stays up well after the museums and cultural attractions close, allowing the visitor to enjoy cruises through the winding canals or out the broad Neva to the Bay of Finland, or just to walk around the waterfronts and enjoy the street artists and musicians that congregate on the banks of the river. St. Petersburg is the home of summer “White Nights” and while I was there before they started, can imagine how magnificent the city is under the midnight sun.
St. Petersburg seamlessly blends European and Russian imperial architecture and ambiance. It is a city that lets one breathe, the broad horizontal lines create a sense of space and harmony that is often lacking in other places. It is a city that inspires creativity and dreams of grandeur. This is the city where Vladimir Putin was born. It is telling that he is from a city that was created by changing the natural environment to meet the Tsar’s wishes; Peter envisioned an imperial palace and city where only a small fishing village once stood in the midst of constantly flooding swamplands. He commissioned his engineers to redesign the landscape and keep the sea waters flowing according to manmade paths. His vision became reality. Yet, it is also a place where the sea and sky dictate daily life and movement. Time will tell if St. Petersburg’s latest Tsarist son’s vision of the world will follow Peter’s footsteps or other Russian leaders’ visions. In the meantime, though, St. Petersburg is a city apart from the rest of Russia. It has its own unique heritage and a very cosmopolitan attitude. It is a city I hope to return to.
