What a wonderful day!
We headed off in the general direction of The Hermitage, but were
sidetracked to view the Admiralty building, constructed in 1706 on plans drawn
up by Peter the Great himself. It
contains an internal canal and originally included a shipyard that built the
backbone of the original Russian navy.
It is set in beautiful parkland which also houses the Bronze Horse, sitting
on the Thunder Stone – a larger-than-life portrayal of a mounted Peter, built
by Catherine the Great, a great admirer of her predecessor. The Thunder Stone is purportedly the largest
stone ever moved by humans and weighed 1500 tonnes prior to being carved down
for its present purpose.
We then crossed the road to St Isaac’s Cathedral, built in
the mid-19th century. It is
absolutely stunning! Covered entirely in
frescoes and with a main door of oak and bronze, with three dimensional friezes
and weighing some twenty tonnes, it is the largest Orthodox basilica in the
world and the fourth largest cathedral in the world. Breathtaking!
After a delicious Georgian lunch of dumplings and kebabs, we
finally made it to The Hermitage Museum.
The building, the “Winter Palace” was originally built as the winter
residence of the royal family in the mid-18th century. When Catherine assumed the throne and
returned to St Petersburg, in 1762, she expanded the palace and installed her
huge art collection. It now houses over 3 million works of art and world
cultural artefacts. It contains paintings, graphic works, sculptures, works of
applied art, archaeological artefacts and numismatic objects.
We wandered,
spellbound, through the great halls and chambers, viewing works by such masters
as Rubens, Rembrandt, Van Dyck, Caravaggio, Monet, Da Vinci, Bosch, Pissarro –
Rubens alone has an entire gallery to himself, displaying scores of works of
art, some four metres high. The
galleries also contain statuary and relics from antiquity through to modern
times. We decided that you would need a
couple of days to do the museum’s entire collection justice. Alas, we did not have that time.
We moved on to
the Kazan Cathedral (enjoying some street music on the way). Built in the first
decade of the 19th century it is unashamedly modelled on St Peters
Basilica in Rome, however its interior has none of the grandeur or opulence of
the original. So we continued on to the
Church of the Saviour on Spilled Blood.
Built in the early years of the 20th century on the site of
the assassination of Emperor Alexander II in 1881, its interior is entirely
covered in mosaics, some 7,500 square metres, and is said to contain the
largest collection of mosaics in the world.
It has an interesting history; after the revolution it was ransacked and
looted, and was closed by the Soviet government in 1932, During World War II it was used as a morgue
for those who died in combat, or from starvation. After the war it was used as a storehouse for
vegetables. In the late 1990s it was
restored but has never been reconsecrated and is now a museum.
So after an
exhausting but exhilarating day we dragged ourselves back to our apartment for
a well-earned rest.
The opulence of the cathedrals and palaces is too much!!!
ReplyDeleteSensory overload !!
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