St Petersburg is a much more European city than, for example, Moscow. It has been described either as where the East meets the West, or as ‘the Venice of the North’. It is a city of many contrasts, with the architecture being a combination of traditional Russian styles, with some European influence too. Despite the poverty of the Russian people, the buildings are absolutely superb. I came here four or five years ago, on a school trip, and I have some fantastic memories of St Petersburg that I’d like to share. I apologise in advance that this is going to be a fairly lengthy op (and please, please don’t be like my history tutor and say that “length is not strength” – I know that, but there are so many aspects of St Petersburg to talk about!) I have separated it into 4 main sections – so you can skip bits if you are just browsing, and not specifically intending to travel here.
St Petersburg was of course once the capital city of Russia, founded by Peter the Great. It remained the capital of Imperial Russia for 200 years, until the Russian Revolution. It was renamed Petrograd during the first world war, and then Leningrad in 1924, after the death of Lenin. Now of course, it’s back to St Petersburg since the fall of the communist system…wonder how long it will keep its name for this time!
1) First of all, where to go and what to see – I have highlighted only a few of the main ‘must sees’ here – if I mentioned everywhere that I had been, you would be here all day just reading about it!
a) The Hermitage ~~~~~~~~~~~ This is one of the most famous galleries in the whole of Russia. Housed in a magnificent duck-egg green painted building, which was originally built for the imperial court, and as a home for the Tsar and his family, the Hermitage is now the biggest gallery I have ever been in. Apparently if you spent only 10 seconds looking at every item in here, it would take three and a half years! With only an afternoon here, we had to be selective. The malachite room was one of my personal favourites, with everything made of the green malachite stone from the Uralmountains – very impressive.
The whole gallery is lavishly furnished, with sweeping marble staircases, decorated with gold, many mirrors, chandeliers, and fantastic painted ceilings. Another favourite room of mine was the Pavilion Hall, which had a table with a map of the world on it, each section made out of different precious stones. The value of the items in here must be incredible! The floor in here was also made up of a mosaic, and there was a view out onto the hanging gardens of Catherine the Great.
The square in front of the Hermitage was where, in 1905, the events of ‘bloody Sunday’ took place, and it is still used now as an area for protests. In the square you’ll see a tall monument, which was to commemorate Alexander
I’s victory over Napoleon in 1812. Wherever you go in St Petersburg you will see statutes, monuments and symbols commemorating some aspect of the Russian past. This city is completely packed with history – my dream city!
b) The Cathedral of the Resurrection: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ If you’ve read my review on St Basil’s in Moscow, you will remember I said that there was an even more magnificent cathedral in St Petersburg – well, this is it. It is in the same style as St Basils, with the many towers, topped off with colourful domes, but the colouring of this one is more tasteful – it is in largely blue, green, gold and brown and looks absolutely fantastic, as if it has come out of a fairy tale. We didn’t actually go inside, because like St Basils, apparently the inside is a bit of a let down if compared to the exterior.
On this site, a revolutionary terrorist killed Tsar Alexander II in 1881, by throwing a bomb at him. His son, Alexander III, began to construct this memorial church, and it was completed in 1907. The reason it resembles St Basil’s, and the traditional Russian style, is because there was a growth in ‘national consciousness’ and feelings of national identity at the beginning of the 20th century.
Interesting fact – this cathedral has almost twenty different names! No wonder I got so confused when I was here. It is also known as the Church of the Spilled Blood, Church of the Assumption and Church of the Redeemer, for example. Anyway, regardless of its name, it’s a definite place to visit, a perfect photo opportunity (just don’t do what I did and drop the camera – all of my later photos had a lovely blurred bit in the corner!)
c) The Piskaryevskaya Cemetery ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ This is the graveyard where the bodies of five hundred thousand civilian victims of the Second World War are buried in mass graves marked only with the year. An eternal flame and a large Motherland statue remind visitors of the tremendous suffering that the city endured during the blockade, which began in 1941 and lasted 900 days. This might not be the most enjoyable part of the trip but to really get to know the city you need to understand its bad times as well as its good times. There was also an exhibition here with photos from the war, and our tour guide explained in detail about the siege. Many more people would have starved to death had it not been for the ‘road of life’, over the frozen Lake Ladoga.
d) The Aurora ~~~~~~~~~~~~ This is the battleship from where the blank shot was fired to signal the start of the revolution in 1917. To be honest, unless you’re big on ships then I’m not sure this is the most interesting place to visit, however, it is free! There’s no information on board the ship for tourists to find out about the history, so as with many of the attractions I have mentioned, you’ll really need a tour guide to make the most of it.
e) The Summer Palace of Catherine the Great ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ This is not strictly in St Petersburg as such, but is in a nearby village, which used to be Tsarkoye Selo, (village of the tsars), now renamed Puskin – after the poet. The Russians certainly go in for this renaming business! The summer palace of Catherine the Great looks fantastic – it is in baroque style, and the outside is a brilliant blue colour, with ornate decoration – windows edged with gold for example. There is some similarity with the Hermitage design, and indeed, they were both designed by Rastrelli. Inside, there are many, many rooms, one of my favourites being a Chinese room, with delicately painted Chinese wallpaper. There is a fantastically large ballroom, and I was having a great time imagining Nicholas II and his family having fabulous high society balls here. However, there is one thing which to me, made it a bit of a let down – it is all fake!!! This palace was restored after it was destroyed during the second world war. Whilst it does look fantastic, and has been restored amazingly well, it is not quite as good as I am sure the real thing would have been. Still, it’s well worth a visit, and if you’ve got time, the landscaped gardens can while away a pleasant hour or two.
Between St. Isaac's Cathedral and the Neva lies Senate square, (formerly Decembrists' Square – yes, yet another name change!), and this is where the famous bronze horseman statue is to be found. The statue was commissioned by Catherine the Great in honour of Peter the Great, and apparently, the piece of granite upon which the statue rests was a favourite of Peter the Great (though how anyone can a favourite piece of granite is beyond me!). He is said to have called this piece of granite ‘thunder’ and used it as a platform to observe his surroundings. This monument was also a main character in Pushkin's mini-epic about this city, The Bronze Horseman.
Extra advice for when visiting the museums: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Any bag larger than a ladies' handbag must be checked at the cloakroom – they are incredibly strict about this rule. So don’t leave anything valuable in there! I had a lipstick go missing from a coat pocket (coats have to go in the cloakrooms too).
If you plan to take photos, you’ll need to buy a photo permit. However, if you have taken a camera with you, and decide the permit is too expensive, they won’t allow it into the museum (in fact you have to walk through metal detectors to check – though we discovered that its possible to sneak in disposable cameras). If in this situation, you have to pay one of the museum staff to keep the camera in a safe place – so if I were you, just pay for the permit, at least that way you’ll be paying to get some use out of the camera! Also – I would recommend that you bring as many films from home as possible, you might not find it very easy to buy them in St Petersburg – they were astronomically expensive in my hotel.
Some museums with shiny wooden floors make you attach large strange slipper-like devices to your shoes, you can have some fun sliding about with these – but be careful as it can be very slippery! The aim of this is to protect the floors, in places like Peter the Great’s winter palace for example the benefits of this are obvious.
2) How to see the city: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Most of my time travelling round the city was spent on board the coach, and I would certainly recommend taking an organised trip – you will probably learn a lot more about the places that you pass than if you were going alone. And I don’t know anyone that would want to drive in St Petersburg – the cars (nearly all Ladas or Skodas) seem to follow no recognisable form of highway code – and imagine if you had an accident and had to get carted off in one of their ambulances – which look like converted white vans – very scary looking indeed! The road is covered in pot holes and it is not unusual to see drivers driving down the wrong side of the road at excessive speeds – watch out when crossing the roads and always take any underground crossings if available!
Taking a boat trip is also a great way to see the city. The boat was certainly not the most luxurious I’ve ever been on, but the trip was fun nonetheless, if a bit cold! We sat outside for most of the journey, wrapped up warmly, but seeing as it was October, by the end of the trip we were in the much warmer inside. We didn’t get such good views inside however. Because St Petersburg, “the Venice of the North” has so many rivers running through it, the Neva probably being the most well known, taking a boat trip means you get right into the heart of the city, giving you spectacular views of all the well-known landmarks, such as the Hermitage, for example. If you come to St Petersburg be warned that you won’t be able to take any boat trips from November until the Spring – the rivers freeze over! We were on one of the last trips of the year.
The metro is another way to get around, incredibly cheap – but be careful, firstly of pickpockets, and secondly, make sure you know the Cyrillic alphabet, otherwise it’s very easy to get lost, as two members of my party found out. Trains can get quite busy, so make sure you arrange a meeting point with any people you might be travelling with, just in case of separation – and I speak from experience here. The stations are not quite as decorative as those you find in Moscow, but there is a lot of communist symbolism about – the hammer and sickle for example, and some busts of notable personages such as Lenin. You’ll also find some mosaics at some of the stations depicting events from Russian history. A lot more interesting than the London tube!
3) Miscellaneous Information and Advice: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Money – whilst the currency in Russia is the rouble, you will need to take American dollars with you, and then change some of these into roubles when you get there, as the rouble is not allowed to leave the country (in theory anyway – I ‘smuggled’ some roubles out as souvenirs). It’s advisable to carry most of your money on you in a money belt under your clothes, with just a little amount easily available for all the many ‘sellers’ you are bound to encounter. The markets and many shops only accept dollars.
Souvenirs and shopping – There are so many things you will want to buy here. Luckily prices are not too expensive. I went to a market in St Petersburg, just opposite the Cathedral of the Spilled Blood, and found a fantastic little wooden carved box, each side had a different scene from St Petersburg on it. I managed to get the price down to $15 (you’ll need to haggle here to get the best bargains), which was well worth it, and the man selling it even included a little carved animal too. This market was great – I would strongly recommend you go to at least one market if you come here, they sell all the typical tourist souvenirs that you will want to take home for your friends and family. You can pick up matryoshka dolls for as little as $3, usually much cheaper than the shops you will find in your hotel. I also bought a family of glass hedgehogs, numerous sets of matryoshka dolls as presents, some amber earrings (90% of the world’s amber is produced from the Baltic coast), and one special set of matryoshka dolls, each one being a famous Russian leader, going from Lenin up to Yeltsin.
4) Food and Drink ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
You can get incredibly cheap vodka here too – we found some for the equivalent of 70p a bottle. However – the quality was decidedly dodgy and when I returned, I read something that advised you never to buy vodka from a street kiosk! Talking of drinks, make sure you take water purification tablets with you – the water really isn’t safe to drink, although fortunately only a couple of people came down with diarrhoea. We all took an empty 2 litre bottle with us, then purified water when we got there, for drinking and teeth etc.
Food here wasn’t actually too bad – a lot better than we had been led to expect. My roommate and I had bought enough chocolate with us to sink a battleship, and we ended up giving it to the tour guide – they really welcome this apparently, as their wage is only the equivalent of a few pounds a week, so chocolate which could be given to their children as a treat is accepted eagerly. The food we ate in our hotel was nothing too exotic, but was filling, and we had large portions. Popular meals included borscht, the Russian soup made from beetroot, stroganoff, chicken kiev, and some unknown meat wrapped in batter (we called this either colon or ferret depending on the size of the portion!). The Russians also seemed keen on making little pot meals – with a stew in an individual pot covered over by a layer of pastry. Not bad actually! Desserts were good – some yummy truffle like cakes, and lots of vanilla ice cream. We used to use this icecream to put in the coffee – it was very thick and black, none too pleasant really, and they never gave us any milk for it!
Overall then, this is a fantastic place to come and visit. There is so much to see and do, that you will need to plan where you want to go before you come, in order to try to fit in as much as possible. Even if you spent years here, you would still keep coming across new things that you hadn’t seen before. If you’re a fan of history or of architecture, then you simply have to visit St Petersburg, I can guarantee that anyone who visits will leave with a fabulous collection of photos and memories! I’d also recommend that if you come here, try to read up on the history before you go as it really will ensure that the places you visit mean so much more to you, and you won’t feel lost when your tour guide is talking about events that you don’t have a clue about. Writing this op on St Petersburg has really made me long to go back!!
Postscript: I haven't written the prices of any of the attractions I visited, since I was on an organised tour, and it was four years ago, so prices will have changed a lot by now. My trip was £600 and it included flights to Moscow and back from St Petersburg, 7 nights hotel accommodation, all meals, and all entrance fees, plus use of a coach, and a sleeper train between Moscow and St Petersburg - excellent value!
Good op for visitors (incidentally, Tsarskoe Selo was renamed Pushkin because he went to school at the Lycee there). Having spent a couple of years working and studying in St. P, I know that it is incredibly different if you stray off the beaten track, or if you are not with a group, but good op for visitors. Main advice: just be careful!
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