A week in Saint Petersburg

Don’t think you can see the highlights of Saint Petersburg in a week. We barely scratched the surface, and after a week our list of things we wanted to see and do was still longer than what we actually managed to see and do.

I guess I’ll start with the riding to get into the city. The outer suburbs like Pushkin and Petergof are mostly connected with auto-centric development, somewhat miserable for cyclists. However, after riding about 12-15km east from Petergof, we arrived in more dense urbanization. It was still another ~20km into the city center, but the riding was surprisingly easy and pleasant considering the size of the city. Compared to other large cities I’ve pedaled in I’d rate Saint Petersburg favorably, above Tokyo, Mexico City, Cairo, İstanbul, Los Angeles, Bangkok, but not (yet?) up to the standards of Seoul, Madrid, or Fukuoka. Since I’m here comparing the ease and joy of bicycling in large cities, my experience in Saint Petersburg was on par with Manila and Barcelona.

Some Asian stir fry out in these residential blocks powered us the rest of the way to the city center.

Check out this space on the Синий мост, a bridge over the Moika River, near the city center. It apparently used to be a parking lot and has been converted (temporarily? inexpensively?) to a pleasant place to sit.

That’s quite near where we stayed, near St. Isaac’s Cathedral (we never did make it inside).

Mostly we walked to visit the sights in the center of the city, but one day I got on my bicycle to go further afield. I went by the Marble Palace, one of at least four palaces housing the supposedly excellent Russian Museum which unfortunately we didn’t have time to visit.

The main collection is here in the Mikhailovsky Palace.

Mikhailovsky Castle (aka Saint Michael’s Castle, aka Engineers’ Castle) is also part of the Russian Museum,

as is Rastrelli’s Stroganov Palace.

What a modest exterior by Rastrelli you’re probably thinking. On my bicycle excursion I also made it out to Rastrelli’s Smolny Convent.

That perhaps looks more like what we saw in Pushkin and Jelgava. As long as we’re comparing Rastrelli works, we should also look at Vorontsov Palace (not open to the public).

Finally, after nine other Rastrelli works on this blog (Rundāle Palace, Jelgava Palace, Peterhof Palace, Peterhof Palace chapels, Smolny Convent, Vorontsov Palace, Catherine Palace, Hermitage Pavilion (at Tsarskoe Selo), Stroganov Palace), let’s see his most famous, the Winter Palace.

That, of course, is the building that houses the State Hermitage Museum. But, wait, just like when we were in Saint Petersburg, I’m getting distracted way too easily. We were on a little bicycle excursion. Tauride Palace is near the Smolny Convent.

Saint Petersburg is built on islands in the Neva River delta, and there are canals all over the place, giving the city the nickname “Venice of the North”. I rode by Yelagin Palace on very pleasant Yelagin Island.

Across a branch of the Neva to the north is the Buddhist Temple, Дацан Гунзэчойнэй.

Heading SE from Yelagin Island crossing at least two more islands, we come to the large Petrogradsky Island and the so-called Cathedral Mosque, modeled after the Gur-e-Amir mausoleum in Samarkand.

Finally coming to the end of this short bicycle ride we have the Swedish-built Peter and Paul fortress on yet another island. Like Palmanova and Elvas it is perhaps best appreciated from the air. There’s a photo on wikipedia. The church on the island is known for having the highest spire in the city.

The pair of odd-looking and oddly named Rostral columns (former lighthouses?) sit across the water from the fortress.

It seems we spent part of every day in Saint Petersburg wandering around gawking at one grand building after another.

There are seemingly endless wonderful canal views.

That yellow neo-classical Greek building in the above photo is the Rumyantsev Mansion housing the Rumyantsev Museum. Bah — there’s so much to see!

Our audio guide pointed out the four-horse bronze statue on top of the Alexandrinsky Theatre building. We didn’t get inside.

But we did get inside the Mikhailovsky Theatre for a ballet performance.

And what a great surprise one day to get a message from our hosts in Petergof. They had bought us tickets for the Prince Igor opera at the Mariinsky Theatre. It was a wonderful performance in a beautiful building.

Thank you so much, Tanya and Roman.

I have mentioned some museums that we didn’t have time for. What are the must-see museums in Saint Petersburg? I have no idea, but I can recommend three of the four museums that we visited. For starters you can skip the confusingly named Peter the Great Winter Palace. It’s a restoration of the modest house where Peter lived before he started building luxurious palaces, worth visiting, I suppose, for those with an acute interest in Romanov history.

After seeing the opulent interior design in a number of palaces, I was curious to see the luxurious treasures at the Fabergé Museum, housed in the Shuvalov Palace. I was not disappointed. The exhibit is upstairs, accessed by this stairway.

The 14 eggs are apparently the largest collection (of Fabergé eggs) in the world.

There were a couple rooms of silver, a room of paintings, a room of religious artifacts, and two rooms with different types of enamel. Lined with silver this first type of enamel is the Champlevé technique.

The Fabergé workshop (not everything at the museum is from the Fabergé workshop; contemporary artists doing similar work are also showcased) specialized in 144 shades of solid-colored enamel.

There’s no end to what rich people can spend their money on. I liked that museum.

Geologists will not want to miss the Central Scientific Research Geologic Survey Museum with at least 230 display cases of rocks and minerals (bring your passport; it was the only time I was asked for it during our two weeks in Russia).

As a geographer the reason I went was for the 4.5m x 5.9m map of the Soviet Union, made of stones, colored by elevation.

Wow, what a treasure!

First on many people’s list for Saint Petersburg, perhaps rightly so, is the Hermitage Museum. It’s a beautiful palace, an art museum, an archeology museum, a history museum, somehow all rolled into one. We visited twice but still missed a lot. Do your research before you go. We had some old incorrect information. Perhaps many of the European masters have been moved to a different museum? We did find a room full of Rembrandt and the two famous madonna by Leonardo da Vinci.

Danaë by Rembrandt is the one some crazy dude took a knife to in 1985 which is why so many of the paintings at the Hermitage are behind glass.

The reflection off the glass is frustrating and is one of the reasons I’m going to try not to show too many photos of the paintings from this museum. But, wait, the photo of this Botticelli turned out alright.

We saw Rastrelli’s style in the building’s exterior. However, the Hermitage burned down, and the interior was mostly redone in a more subdued style. The exception is the Jordan Staircase which, except for the grey granite columns, was largely restored per Rastrelli’s original plans.

Many people consider the Malachite Hall the best of the state rooms.

What about the Armorial Hall?

Or St. George’s Hall?

Or the Pavilion Hall with the fabulous Peacock Clock? It still works. I think they show it off weekly. Plan your visit carefully if you want to see it in action.

I can see Rastrelli in the Grand Church.

The Loggia of Raphael probably reminds you of the eponymous room in the Vatican.

How to decide what to focus on?

That last photo is just one of the rooms housing Roman marble at the Hermitage. Even being accustomed to the excellent collection at the Antalya Museum, I was impressed by the Hermitage Roman marble collection.

And a Roman glass mosaic:

For some the archaeology highlight is ancient Egypt.

Having visited at least one Urartu site in Turkey I made a special effort to find the Urartu room. The collection is largely due to the excavation work of Boris Piotrovsky at Teishebaini (near Yerevan). It’s the most extensive collection I’ve seen, but maybe there’s a room at the museum in Ankara that I’ve missed? I think there are some pieces at a museum in Ahlat, but that’s still on my list! We ran out of time on that trip as well…

You see Urartian stuff isn’t so exciting, but along the way we stumbled upon 18th century Qing Dynasty jade

and 13th century Persian tiles.

One of my favorite pieces was the jasper Kolyvanskaya Vase from Siberia.

Sorry for such a long post. We tried to pack a lot in in a short time. My notes from our last day read: “It would be easy to spend another week in Saint Petersburg.” Like İstanbul, Mexico City, Kyoto, and Cairo — all cities I’ve visited multiple times — a week will only whet your appetite.

You have finally made it to the end of our nine-week six-country (mostly bicycle) tour from Minsk to Saint Petersburg. It ended up being quite the capital city trip: Minsk, Vilnius, Rīga, Tallinn, and Helsinki; and former capitals: Kaunas, Jelgava, and Saint Petersburg.