Muse back!
July 26, 2008 / Saturday
This Place Really Comes Alive With Stories Behind Everything
Today, my last full day in St. Petersburg, brought me a final outing with Sergey for this trip.
Transfiguration Cathedral
We met at 10 and started with a visit to the Transfiguration Cathedral, close to where I'm staying. They were holding service when we arrived, and so I got to experience more beautiful singing. Sergey explained some of the icons at the church, and why there were so many of them. I looked curiously at a line of people on one side of the church, and he explained that they were there for confession with the priest at the front, as there is no confession box in Russian Orthodox churches.
As with all the other cathedrals I've visited, this one was beautiful. And, as with all the other active cathedrals I visited, I took no pictures. You'll just have to take my word that it was shiny and grand on the inside.
Joseph Brodsky
Next, we passed by an apartment where the poet Joseph Brodsky once lived. In the 1960's, he was declared a parasite of society for being unemployed (as a poet can't really prove his profession) and sent into exile. Later, he was allowed to leave (or more like kicked out of) the country, and he went to the US. A number of years later, he won the Nobel Prize in Literature. Woops! Maybe they shouldn't have expelled him after all.
St. Petersburg's First Building
I can't believe I didn't take a picture of this!
Several blocks from the Peter and Paul Fortress is a modest one story structure, made of wood. (It's painted to look like brick, ha!) This was the first building that Peter the Great had built, when he decided to build a city here. It was barely tall enough for Peter himself, as it is a small building and he was a tall man. I really wish I'd taken a picture of this; what a contrast between this building and the grand palaces we've been seeing on this trip!
To make up for not taking a picture, here is a page with a picture, and here is a closeup of the fake brick paint.
After walking past it for the good part of a week, I finally got to visit the Peter and Paul Fortress. It's basically a little island with a wall around it, and while it was built to be a defendable fortress in a strategic location for St. Petersburg, it was never used for that purpose. It was later used to hold political prisoners, though.
Some neat facts about this place. The city's first wooden bridge brings you onto the island, and there is an active mint for coins and medals here. The spire of the cathedral here used to be the highest structure in the city... until they built a TV antenna. Now it's the second highest. D'oh.
We went inside the Peter and Paul Cathedral, and I discovered that it was the resting place for the royal family. All those czars and emperors I'd heard about these last two weeks, their remains could be found here. (Well, except for ones who got murdered and then didn't get found, but they're working on that.) Peter the Great, Catherine the Great, Paul I, Alexander II, all of them, here. I totally hadn't expected that.
Coat of Arms
I've been seeing double headed birds all over the place, and when I saw one over a gate at the Fortress I asked Sergey what it was. It's the Russian coat of arms. It originated in the 15th century after the marriage of Ivan III to a Byzantine princess. Under Communist rule, it was replaced by the hammer and sickle, but it returned (with slightly different details, but still with two heads) after the fall of the USSR. Sergey finished by saying, "Do you know what we call it now? Chernobyl chicken." LOL!
We finished the tour with a visit to the Russian Museum, which, as the name implies, is home to lots and lots of Russian art. The museum is housed in the Mikhailovsky Palace and started with just over 400 pieces of art, and now houses over 400,000 pieces. Sergey used to work here, and he knows quite a bit about pretty much everything in this place. I heard many stories about specific artists, and also about specific pieces. It's much more than I can recount here, but perhaps when I post pictures of these pieces I will include some of those stores in the description.
At a more general level, it was a really great lesson on how Russian art has grown over the centuries. We started off with 14th century works, mostly paintings done as icons for churches. Back in those days, the art was simple, and the artist did not really matter; he was simply a tool for God to use to create these icons as channels of communication for worshipers. Later, as the paintings became more complex, the artists themselves started recognizing themselves as people of standing and value also. As we progressed through the centuries, some of the paintings were just downright amazing. I hadn't originally planned to come here, but it turned out to be quite a good visit.
Lacquer Boxes
We stopped by a souvenir shop on the way back. This was a nice shop, and they had much better items than those found with vendors on the street. They had an entire section of lacquer boxes, each painstakingly crafted by hand. The detail and quality of these boxes was amazing. So were their price tags; some of them cost several thousand dollars. Yikes.
What's Next?
Next, I pack up and hop on the plane first thing tomorrow morning. I have a short list of things I want to do the next time I come back: visit the Aurora, the Artillery Museum (I didn't know this existed until today), and the Ethnography Museum (the name is misleading; it's something of a collection of curiosities). I'm sure there are more items for the list, but that's what I have to start with for next time. If there is a next time. And if not, well, I've had one heck of a trip.
[ Update: Also need to visit the Kresty Prison Museum. They give tours! ]
July 26, 2008 04:08 AM | St. Petersburg