August 2, 2013

Last week we had a wonderful trip to Moscow and St. Petersburg. It is impossible to show you even half of what we saw as I took nearly 800 pictures. But I have tried to pick out the highlights and hope that the pictures I have chosen will give you a glimpse into Russian History. Our tour guides were great so I will include a few of their insights that hopefully 

will make the pictures more meaningful.

We started our trip in Moscow. I have to say that I was really impressed with Moscow. It is a city of about 12 million and the amount of building is incredible. It is a very modern city with a lot of history mixed in and that is where I put my focus…..the history.

One of Stalin's Seven Sisters - all exactly alike

The morning we arrived we didn’t have a guide so we took a two hour bus tour around the city. It was very informative and gave us a feel for the layout of our surroundings. We knew that in two days we would never get to see even a small part of all the things we would have liked but we did get to see more than I thought we would. We first went to Red Square and the Kremlin. Red Square isn’t what I had imagined or even as big as I thought it would be after reading about all of the events that have taken place there, but it is very interesting.

Entry Gate to Red Square

Red Square

 

Orthodox Church on Red Square

There were museums, churches and my favorite, St. Basil’s Cathedral the most photographed church in Moscow. This is the most recognizable of all the cathedrals in Moscow and was built in 1561 to celebrate the victory of Ivan the Terrible over the Kahn of Kazan. Two architects from Italy were hired to design and build it. After it was finished, Ivan asked them if it would ever be possible to recreate this same building. Thinking that he might want to build another one like it somewhere else, they enthusiastically said “yes.” He immediately had their eyes put out, so that they would not be able to recreate it. A little miscommunication but fortunately it did not cost them their lives. The cathedral is as beautiful on the inside as on the out. What we all should be, right?

St. Basil's Cathedral

Inside St. Basil's

Inside St. Basil's Cathedral

Front of St. Basil's Cathedral

The State History Museum is two floors of extensive Russian History.

Historical Museum at Entrance to Red Square

The Kremlin formed the heart of the ancient city, which to this day houses the political headquarters of the world’s geographically largest nation. There are of course several areas that are off bounds to tourists but there is plenty to see there including about four churches, the Ivan the Great Bell Tower, the Kremlin Armory and The Patriarch’s Palace which is a museum.

Kremlin Bell Tower

Kremlin Palace

Cathedrals at the Kremlin

Wall Around Krermlin

We then took a boat tour which is also a great way to see the city and get a sense of its scale. The canals were created to prevent flooding of the great Moscow River which flows through the city.

 

Canal Tour

  

Bolshoi Theatre

Cathedral of Christ

City Offices

Beautiful Metro

Tomb of the Unknown Soldier

We arrived in beautiful St. Petersburg early in the morning. The driver told us that St. Petersburg usually only has about 30 days a year of sunny weather and it was sunny every day of our stay. Also, white nights were just over but we still enjoyed sun from 4:00 in the morning until 11:00 at night. It is just the opposite in winter so we really came during the best time of year.

We had a tour guide scheduled for all of the days we were in St. Petersburg and it was a good thing because later we heard that if you don’t have a guide, chances are you will never get into any of the main palaces. The first few hours our guide drove us around the city and showed us all of the main historical places in the city. I fell in love with the romantic feel of all the canals (once again there to prevent flooding of the city) and was anxious for our canal ride through the city.

St. Petersburg, the onetime capital of the Russian Empire was founded in 1703 built up in a marshy area. It took thousands of men to build this city and due to the horrible work conditions, over 60,000 lost their lives.

The main city sites included St. Isaac’s Cathedral (the largest and most prominent cathedral that holds 10,000) the Russian Museum, Pushkin’s Apartment, the Church on the Spilled Blood where the murder of the Emperor Alexander II was committed (a beautiful church that almost rivals St. Basil’s in Moscow), St. Petersburg University and the Marinsky Theatre.

Church on Spilled Blood so named because that is where the Emperor Alexander II was murdered.

Russian Museum

Peter and Paul Fortress

Kazan Cathedral

St. Isaac's Cathedral (largest in St. Petersburg)

 Stock Exchange

St. Petersburg University

Summer Garden where the land of Russia was dedicated for the preaching of the gospel, in 1903 and 1990.

Vladimir's Cathedral

Palaces of the Tsars
 

Tsarskoye Selo (the Tsar’s Village) was the summer home of the Tsars. It was developed during Catherine I (Peter the Great’s wife) but it was during the reign of her daughter Elizabeth that it was completed in so much style and grandeur. It was almost totally destroyed during the revolution but most of the artifacts on the inside were removed and hidden or buried so were protected. You almost need sunglasses for this tour as there is so much gold and it is the main décor in the rooms finished by Catherine. Elizabeth added a few different decors that are exceptionally beautiful. Elizabeth brought 15,000 dresses and 5000 pair of shoes when she came to Tsarskoye Selo and the line of carriages to bring these dresses to the palace was 23 kilometers long. The property of this summer palace is over 200 acres and the gardens and lakes are all beautiful.

  

Entrance to Tsarskoye Selo or Catherine's Summer Palace

Ballroom

Lake Outside

Palace Chapel

Dining Room

Entry Hall

I spy Gary and Karlene

Gallery Room

Palace Gardens

One of Elizabeth's 15,000 dresses

Cameron Art Gallery at Palace

Stream Running through Gardens

Peterhof (Peter’s Court) was built in the 1700’s by Peter the Great. It is located on the Gulf of Finland and sits on over 2000 acres with beautiful parks and over 100 fountains. The fountains are powered by gravity only, no generators or pumps and are some of the most creative magnificent structures of this kind.  Peter wanted his fountains and parks to be grander than any other in the world, and he succeeded.

 

Peterhof Chapel

To say the palace interior is opulent is an understatement. It has been said that Rastrelli, one of the architects, “never met a surface he didn’t want to gild”. This palace is one of hundreds of palaces in this area and along the Gulf of Finland.  Unfortunately no pictures were allowed to be taken in Peterhof.  

Hydrofoil Back to Winter Palace 

The Winter Palace of the Russian Emperors from 1763 to 1917 is one of the five buildings that make up the ensemble of the State Hermitage Museum. The front of the palace looks out over the Neva River. In 1764 Catherine II purchased a collection of over 225 canvases of renowned Western European Masters which has now turned into over 3,000,000 exhibits.  It is said that if you paused for one second to look at each of these exhibits it would take you 8 years to get through the museum. It is indeed the finest art collection in the world.  The Winter Palace was decorated every bit as elaborate as the Summer Palace and as Peterhof, what is missing are the beautiful gardens and parks.

Winter Palace now Hermitage Museum

Grand Stairway

 

da Vinci's The Madonna Litta

Rembrandt's Return of the Prodigal

The Peter and Paul Fortress - When Peter the Great re-claimed the lands along the Neva River in 1703; he decided to build a fort to protect the area from possible attack by the Swedish army and navy. The fortress was founded on a small island in the Neva delta on May 27, 1703 and that day became the birthday of the city of St Petersburg. The Swedes were defeated before the fortress was even completed. For that reason, from 1721 onwards the fortress housed part of the city's garrison and rather notoriously served as a high security political jail. Among the first inmates was Peter's own rebellious son Alexei. Later, the list of famous residents included Dostoyevsky, Gorkiy, Trotsky and Lenin's older brother, Alexander. Parts of the former jail are now open to the public... In the middle of the fortress stands the impressive Peter and Paul Cathedral, the burial place of all the Russian Emperors and Empresses from Peter the Great to Alexander III and also the family of Tsar Nicholas II. The Cathedral was the first church in the city to be built of stone (1712-33) and its design is curiously unusual for a Russian Orthodox Church.

On top of the cathedrals’ gilded spire stands a magnificent golden angel holding a cross. This weathervane is one of the most prominent symbols of St Petersburg, and at 404 feet tall, the cathedral is the highest building in the city.

Other buildings in the fortress include the City History Museum and the Mint, one of only two places in Russia where coins and medals are minted.

Peter and Paul Fortress

Peter and Paul Cathedral

Inside Peter and Paul Cathedral

The Tomb of the Family of Nicholas II in Cathedral

Peter the Great

The Yusopov Palace on the bank of the main canal was a palace built but hardly lived in by the owners. There are two interesting things about this beautiful palace. In the basement is where Rasputin was given poison in an attempt to kill him (he was then shot in the head and dumped into the canal and it was said he died from drowning.) Secondly, this is the only palace with a theatre inside. This is not your basic home theatre as we know it today but a very beautiful theatre patterned after the Marinksky Theatre, solely for the use of the owner and guests.

 

Yusopov Palace

Bedroom in Palace

Basement room where Rasputin was poisoned

Beautiful inlaid wood floor

Family Seating in the Home Theatre

Dostoyevsky Museum

A very humble museum and home that we also visited was the home of famous author Dostoyevsky. This isn’t on many of the tours but it was close to our hotel and we really enjoyed going there after all the magnificence of the other palaces. It really put things back into perspective.

 

Writing Room

Gary at the Museum entrance

We were grateful for all of the historical places we were able to visit, the past few days. We were amazed at the number of churches that we had been in and passed by not having time to visit. It was good to know that somehow, somewhere God was still a big part of their lives.  We also learned another important thing after being away. There is no place like home…………wherever it may be at any particular time of your life, there is no place like home.

 

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