St Petersburg, Russia, 2006 and 2019

Combining the two different visits to St Petersburg became necessary in my mind because the second was quite disappointing. My affinity for this storied Russian city comes from my grandmother's time working there in the 1890s, probably up until about 1908. Both visits had the added (but sadly limited) personal agenda to photograph the mansion where she lived with the Baron Kusov family. A great deal of post-cruise anguish ensued in matching mixed up photographs and making online comparisons until we finally managed to pinpoint the relevant building. The confusion (and embarrassment) is outlined in https://brendadougallmerriman.blogspot.com/2019/11/a-misplaced-grandmother.html.

A partial shot of the mansion, 2006

In 2019 the most striking sights in St Petersburg were the massive, relentless tourist throngs and their accompanying buses. At every famous site. Even lined up for canal rides. Old streets and thoroughfares were jammed with traffic, shortening the time to be spent where it matters. I do not recall such hordes in 2006. We were told that the city now gets over seven million tourists in a year and the figure keeps increasing. Both my favourite churches, St Isaac and Church on Spilled Blood, were not only half-shrouded with scaffolding, the tours did not include entrance tickets! ... sadly missing the essence of their awesome, inspired, and inspiring interiors.

St Isaac in non-repair mode

Church on Spilled Blood, 2016

The opportunity to shop at a large crafts market was greatly anticipated until it proved to be an outlet for mass-produced souvenirs and high-priced jewellery. Oh well, it was the least crowded place of all.

Two venues were the most worthwhile, to my mind; two I had not seen before. Yusupov Palace was the city home of the most aristocratic family of Imperial times, one of scarcely-imaginable wealth. Prince Felix Yusupov's wife was a niece of Czar Nicholas II. The popularity of this tour meant wall-to-wall throngs being managed by stern attendants and guides. What I was waiting for:

One winter evening in 1916 Felix and some friends invited the dubious monk Rasputin to join them. With nefarious intentions.

Rasputin was considered suspicious and sinister by the nobility and far too influential in the royal court. The conspirators plotted to poison him. Pure drama.

Felix is wondering if the poison worked. It didn't. But Rasputin knew he'd been tricked and tried to leave. A gunshot didn't stop him, either, as he fled bleeding. They finished him off by throwing him in the canal where he drowned.

The canal in front of the palace

Beyond that historical highlight, the palace itself is full of fascinating riches in architecture, decor, and furnishings, requiring rapt visual and audio attention. However, most of the vast and renowned Yusupov art collection ‒ second in abundance, perhaps, only to that of Catherine the Great – was confiscated in Soviet times, to be placed in the Hermitage and other state museums. As the inexorable momentum of one tour group after another hustled us by, we had little more than fleeting views of great beauty and master-crafted details.

It's Peter the Great's city, of course, and I'd missed seeing the Peter and Paul fortress before. A church has existed here since the founding of the city. In this case, we did enter the cathedral (thank you), magnificent resting place of most Imperial rulers and some nobility. The sarcophagi, including those of Peter the Great and Catherine the Great, are white marble with gold crosses, displaying the Imperial double-eagle on corners. Two anomalous standouts vie for attention, one carved from green jasper for Alexander II and the other from rose-coloured rhodonite for his wife.

Borrowed from a postcard (obviously)

To this sacrosanct place were brought the remains of the Romanov family some eighty years after their assassination. Now canonized as an Orthodox saint, Nicholas II might truly rest after so many revisions to their saga. A distant glimpse of the quiet, simple room is the best we can do. The perpetual motion of the crowds was a continual challenge for a decent camera angle or a steady moment ("Dear Guides! Please do not stop groups here"). One likes to think there was some pattern to the unrelenting movement, perhaps known only to the shouting, frustrated tour leaders, but the push and pull of the mob had a mind of its own.

A canal cruise was fun ‒ although some have been infilled, it’s still a city of waterways. An enterprising young man waved at us from each and every of the many low bridges we passed under. He had to run like crazy from one to another, providing much amusement and encouragement. No one was exactly surprised as we found him waiting modestly at our docking point. With his hand out. I fully expect there is an entire coterie of such youth, scrambling the canal streets to earn a few rubles.

An unexpected treat in the port terminal was a good look at the “superyacht” Black Pearl. Berthed near us for a while, then leading us out of the harbour, the sleek Dutch-designed yacht has a DynaRig sailing system, rotating masts, hybrid propulsion, waste heat recovery, and many other high-tech innovations. Well done, Mr. Burlakov!

(although it was not under sail then)

Still, so many places that will not get seen—Alexander Nevsky Monastery and its cemetery of famous musicians and literati―would they too be impossibly thronged with sightseers? This time we did not even see the outside of the Mariinsky Theatre. 

Then there's a loose end to a very long drive in 2006 across the Russian steppes. Congenial Ulf, our Norwegian tour leader, thoughtfully entertained us with a showing of "The Barber of Siberia." The movie was unfinished as we pulled into our destination and to this day I don't know how it ended. I will catch up to the puckish Richard Harris one of these days, one way or another ...

Credit and thanks to CDM for a better grasp on photography :)

© 2019 Brenda Dougall Merriman

Imperial Palaces, Russia 2006

No expense was spared when imperial Russian rulers decided to build. Celebrated international architects, sculptors, craftsmen, and landscape designers were employed to showcase opulence and power. The attention to detail is overwhelming; they all took years of construction plus subsequent additions or improvements. Such monuments inevitably suffered during the Revolution and the Soviet era, but restoration has been careful if not to the same degree at every site.

Tsarskoe Selo is/was a town south of St Petersburg meaning "Tsar's village." Before actually seeing it, my mind was brimming with romantic Russian tales and novels―this was the magical place where generations of royal family and nobility came to the country to play. For me the words triggered imagined scenes of nineteenth century summer frolics and intrigue. For once, the image came true to life, only lacking the live, historical figures.

Two imperial palaces dominate the "village" ... the Catherine Palace and the Alexander Palace. The first was commissioned by Peter the Great for his wife Catherine in 1717 but reconstructed by Empress Elizabeth I in the mid-1700s. The second was built later by Catherine the Great for her grandson, the future Alexander I. It is not possible to see or appreciate both palaces in one day, nor indeed the full extent of even one. One, on our tour.

On my way to the Amber Room!

Catherine Palace, aka the Summer Palace, is the rococo architectural style. Probably the most-viewed treasure of all is the famous, unique Amber Room. Installed by 1770, the panels were fragile and had a dedicated caretaker for maintenance. In 1941 Nazi troops dismantled the room into crates that were hidden no-one knows where now. For the Tercentenary of St Petersburg in 2003, recreation of the Amber Room was completed after twenty years of labour. It was as stunning, as lush, as brilliant as the eyes could absorb.

In 1917; Wikimedia Commons

 

Just one corner of the restoration

Also in the country, on the Gulf of Finland, the Peterhof Estate is another major tourist draw. Peter the Great began the creation of one of the world's most spectacular parklands. The renowned fountains are the most memorable features in acres where you could stroll all day, coming upon one scene after another. Peter's descendants continued to add further water features of engineering ingenuity. "Peterhof is like an encyclopedia of park design through the age of empire."[1] 

The most famous ensemble of fountains, the Grand Cascade, which runs from the northern facade of the Grand Palace to the Marine Canal, comprises 64 different fountains, and over 200 bronze statues, bas-reliefs, and other decorations. At the centre stands Rastrelli's spectacular statue of Samson wrestling the jaws of a lion. The vista of the Grand Cascade with the Grand Palace behind it, the first sight to great visitors who arrive in Peterhof by sea, is truly breathtaking. The Grotto behind the Grand Cascade, which was once used for small parties, contains the enormous pipes, originally wooden, that feed the fountains. 

Elsewhere in the park, the range and diversity of fountains is astounding, from further monumental ensembles like the Chess Cascade and the Pyramid Fountain, to the ever-popular Joke Fountains, including one which sprays unwary passers-by who step on a particular paving stone.[2]

Samson

The Winter Palace complex in St Petersburg includes the Hermitage Museum among its many buildings. Constructed in baroque design under the extravagant eye of Elizabeth I, it was Catherine the Great who added the neo-classical Hermitage and Nicholas I who opened it to the public as a museum. I visited the Hermitage only, a wonderland of art collections that it's estimated would take a person eleven years to explore each exhibit. Endless galleries represent the finest artistic masterpieces the world has seen.

Sprawling across the connected buildings of the Winter Palace, the Small Hermitage and the Old Hermitage, this vast, chaotic and incredibly rich collection is unquestionably the biggest draw for visitors to St. Petersburg. Founded by Catherine the Great who bought up artwork en masse from European aristocrats, embellished by each of her successors, and then massively enriched by Bolshevik confiscations and Red Army seizures in conquered Germany, the Hermitage collection is incredibly varied, ranging from ancient Siberian artifacts to post-impressionist masterpieces by Matisse and Picasso. Equally impressive are the lavishly decorated State Rooms of the Winter Palace, testament to the incredible wealth and extravagant tastes of the Romanov Tsars. [3]

What a privilege to see these historical treasures and revel in beauty while marvelling at the hubris of humankind.

[1] Saint-Petersburg.com (http://www.saint-petersburg.com/peterhof/fountains-peterhof/).

[2] Saint-Petersburg. com (http://www.saint-petersburg.com/peterhof/peterhof-park-and-gardens/).

[3] Saint-Petersburg.com (http://www.saint-petersburg.com/museums/hermitage-museum/winter-palace-and-main-museum-complex/).

© 2017 Brenda Dougall Merriman

Russia was calling ... 2006

Seeking to touch my Grandma's life. Marija, the globetrotting seamstress. I am on my way to St Petersburg, Russia.

Taking the two-lane highway from Helsinki (now there's a revelation of an interesting city) eastward, there are long, lonely stretches of birch woods. This is so like northwestern Ontario. Except here from time to time we see makeshift roadside stands selling smoked fish and prized forest mushrooms. The transport-truck traffic is extremely heavy. Apparently it is less expensive to bring cars and other goods into Russia by road than through the allegedly corrupt port of St Petersburg. Miles of trucks are lined up to cross the border each way.

Our Hotel Pribaltiskiya is situated on Vasilievsky Island—to my satisfaction, because I'd checked maps in advance—the part of the city where Marija once lived in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. I can see her "Liniya 17" street as we rush past. We pass there several times on our back and forth for local tours. Pribaltiskaya is a very large hotel full of businessmen and tour groups. Service people (hotel staff, money exchanger, vendors, even our Russian bus driver) are not outgoing and rarely smile. It’s like they think friendliness would be unprofessional, or they wouldn’t be taken seriously.

The evening outing is a sunset cruise on the River Neva (N'vaaah, as our local guide Anna drawls) with a glass of champagne. Waiting on the embankment is a calm moment for a survey of our surroundings. We are really here in the heart of Peter the Great's dream. The amount of heritage restoration work everywhere boggles me, and the pace of it! Workmen are painting the front of the Winter Palace. Anna is lovely (she knows how to smile) and refreshing and mesmerizes us. Occasionally our boat scrapes its roof on the Fontanka canal bridges because the water is very high today.

One magnificent site after another is ours to explore in this storied city. A day in the Hermitage, another day at Tsarskoe Selo in Catherine Palace and Peter the Great's extravagant countryside estate, Peterhof. 

Church on Spilled Blood is where Tsar Alexander II was assassinated, its magnificent mosaic tile interior, floor to ceiling religious and historic scenes, the most memorable church I have seen anywhere. 

St Isaac's Cathedral, centre of the Russian Orthodox faith, is a huge marble edifice. Sinking on one side (the city was built on a marsh), an international committee of architects is brainstorming how to shore it up. A trio of rather ragged country priests with a couple of wives, on a pilgrimage, are just ahead of us. In the nave after moments of rapt silence, they burst into a spontaneous kyrie eleison which resounds throughout the dome and could not have touched us more deeply.

Back to my unscheduled mission. Abandoning the tour group for a short allotted time, I negotiate a taxicab for 600 roubles; much agonizing about roubles, change, and tipping. The driver has no English whatsoever, just the address printed in Cyrillic script (by a stone-faced hotel employee), about 15 minutes driving from the hotel. The edifice on the corner of Liniya 17 was the home of Baron Kusov (see orange circle on the map); Marija lived in his household as seamstress for his wife and daughters.

This is prime real estate on the embankment boulevard along the north side of the Neva. Some of the grand mansions here are called palaces. Baron Vladimir Alexeyevich Kusov was a director of the Mariinsky Theatre among other favoured imperial appointments. In fact, during his lifetime he owned another five adjoining addresses extending along Liniya 17. Language frustration: In my excitement and the curiosity of the cab driver, I can think of only one word, pointing at the building, exclaiming to him, "Babuschka!"

But SO disappointing! The ubiquitous scaffolding of renovation/restoration covers most of the building. Nouveau riche Russians have been buying these immense mansions, renovating them into modern and expensive apartments. My Baltic researcher had said a Kusov was recently at this address in the telephone book. Considering the communication problem, I balk at trying to knock on doors if I could even find one that looked promising. One always thinks that one will return some day.

"Babuschka!" says the grinning cab driver as he leads me across the boulevard to get a longer shot of the scene. Down the boulevard I spy a church that Marija might have attended. Much later, I spent hours trying to identify it until I finally discovered it was a Catholic church (not an option). A little further on is the block-long Academy of Arts constructed in the 1750s.

St Petersburg is a feast of fabled treasures to explore. It's a joy to see so much preserved and being restored. Our few days cram in but a few highlights, tantalizing glimpses of powerful past glories. It would take weeks to do justice. No time to see the interior of the Mariinsky theatre, home of the unparalleled ballet company; the Baron regularly gave seats to his staff and employees. No time for the cemeteries at Alexander Nevsky monastery, resting place of so many acclaimed artistes. Strolling the Nevsky Prospect at leisure was not an option.

Marija ca.1895; a fine figure of a woman, as my Grandpa would say

Nevertheless, my mental images of Marija's life remain firmly rooted in the nineteenth century. The ambiance is still there ...

 © 2014 Brenda Dougall Merriman. All rights reserved.