St Petersburg was founded by Tsar Peter the Great on May 27, 1703. At the end of the 17th century,he wanted Russia to gain a seaport in order to trade with the rest of Europe. Peter moved the Russian capital from Moscow to Saint Petersburg in 1712 where it remained until the Communist Revolution of 1917. Below is the Monument to Peter the Great.
In 1611, Swedish colonists had built the Nyenskans fortress at the mouth of the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea. On May 12 1703, during the Great Northern War, Peter the Great captured the Nyenskans fortress and replaced it with the Peter and Paul Fortress, the first brick and stone building of the new city.
The Peter and Paul Cathedral is a Russian Orthodox cathedral located inside the Peter and Paul Fortress. It is the first and oldest landmark in St. Petersburg, built between 1712 and 1733 on Hare Island along the Neva River. Both the cathedral and the fortress were originally built under Peter the Great. The cathedral houses the remains of almost all the Russian emperors and empresses from Peter the Great to Nicholas II and his family, who were finally laid to rest in July 1998. The cathedral's bell tower is the world's tallest Orthodox bell tower.
The Hermitage Museum is the second-largest museum of art and culture in the world. It was founded in 1764 by Empress Catherine the Great and has been open to the public since 1852. Its collections, of which only a small part is on permanent display, comprise over three million items including the largest collection of paintings in the world. The collections occupy a large complex of six historic buildings along Palace Embankment, including the Winter Palace (below), a former residence of Russian emperors and now the entrance to the museum.
Catherine the Great was Empress of Russia from 1762 until 1796 and was the country's longest-ruling female leader. The period of her rule, the Catherinian Era, is often considered the Golden Age of the Russian Empire. As a patron of the arts, she presided over the age of the Russian Enlightenment, a period when the Smolny Institute, the first state-financed higher education institution for women in Europe, was established. Below is her portrait hanging in the Hermitage Museum.
Staircase just inside the Winter Palace.
One of the many beautiful rooms within the Winter Palace.
The Hermitage Museum complex as viewed from the opposite side of the Neva River is below. From left to right: Hermitage Theatre (not visible in this photo) – Old Hermitage (only a small corner)– Small Hermitage – Winter Palace (the "New Hermitage" is situated behind the Old Hermitage). We got in lots of steps exploring the Hermitage today. When we were inside, we didn’t even have a sense of when we went from one building to another. We were simply overwhelmed.
We pushed off from the dock about 6:20 this evening. We arrive in Estonia in the morning.
No comments:
Post a Comment