St. Petersburg, Russia (I)

Saturday | June 11, 2016

Early this morning, we steamed into St. Petersburg, our first venture into Russia. The ride in was interesting because we saw nothing but trash heaps in shipyards for the last mile before the dock.

We also saw a special bridge Mr. Putin is building to welcome Mr. Obama.  Oops, it has no middle!

The Russian waterfront housing looked just that– very Soviet.

And those infamous Russian subs were everywhere.

They even pulled one alongside our bloody ship!

St. Petersburg is a fascinating city whose downtown area is full of history, culture, and fine arts. A city with a population of 5,200,000 people, it boasts over 200 places of worship, down from the 500 that existed 50 years ago. It is commonly referred to as the Venice of the North because it has over 512 canals, 800 bridges, 300 km length of canals and 42 islands.

I am not sure if it is just the St. Petersburg port, or all of Russia, but this is the toughest immigration procedure we have seen in the world – including Israel's - even though I was among the minority on the ship who procured Russian visas (at a cost of $1000 each).

We arrived a little early today, which gave us the opportunity to work online, only to learn that Russia has throttled back our internet access, prohibiting access from many social media websites. Finally, we mustered downstairs, and found that we were joining the largest tour the ship has ever launched. In a style that rivals that of a cruise ship, we were hustled on to 4 large buses. It was there that we met our guide, Svetlana, who took us around St. Petersburg for the majority of the day.

Right outside our ship was this gorgeous church.

As our bus was cruising around town, Svetlana gave us a bit of information on St. Petersburg, beyond what we have studied the past several days on the ship.

The city has more museums than most cities in the world. Most of these museums are housed in 500 former palaces that have now been co-opted for that purpose. She also reminded us of something about which we have become painfully aware–the city lies on the 60° latitude and the sun does not go below the horizon at all in the summer– the “white nights” have become familiar. Moreover, St. Petersburg is a rainy town, witnessing 197 days of rain each year, 24 sunless days, and only a few remaining (perhaps 40) days of sun.

The city lies on the Neve River, which is only 74 km long. But it has an extremely fast current, 4 km per hour, as I noticed this morning.  Moreover, it is 27 m deep, ideal for large ships’ passage.

Saint Petersburg was founded in 1703 by Peter the Great (another one, not me).

Ironically, this entire city bears a resemblance to my family namesakes, with the icons of Russia being Peter the Great, Alexander the Great, and Nicholas the Great. (All we need is a Catherine in the family, and we are all set.)

Our first stop was St. Isaacs Cathedral, built by the French born architect Auguste Montferrand to be the main Church of the Russian Empire.

Although it looks bland from the outside, it is stunning inside.

It is the fourth highest domed cathedral in the world– the others include the Vatican and St. Paul’s Cathedral in London– and the largest domed cathedral in all of Russia. Construction began in 1818 and lasted 40 years. The cathedral is decorated in the most elaborate way possible.

Magnificent columns are made of single pieces of red granite and weigh approximately 80 tons each. This large church also boasts 400 pounds of gold, required 400,000 builders to complete, and sits on 11,000 pinewood piles whose foundation is buried 13 m below the street because of the boggy marsh that is the foundation in St. Petersburg.

Interestingly, it was the first building in all of Russia to have central heating, whereby boiling water in the basement creates steam that rises up onto the surface of the marble worship space.

Thirty artists were invited to participate in making the icons and art work around the church.

Also interesting is the fact that no one can see a single seat or bench in this church, even though it is used for services every morning. That is because in the Russian orthodox religion, there is no sitting– only standing and kneeling.

One of the things I found most fascinating is that most of the ”paintings” are really mosaics.

One has to stare at them in some detail to be able to see the fine squared tiles. In the 1930s, much dirt and s00t was scrubbed off the mosaics and the church was restored, before the onset of the war in 1941.

The dome is sensational.

Back in time a bit, however, after the 1917 Russian Revolution, the country became antireligious and the building served as a museum.

Amazingly, Nazi bombs just missed this building – scores of times.

Our next stop was perhaps the most striking building I have ever seen.

The Church of our Savior of the Spilled Blood is a marvelous Russian style church built on the exact spot where Alexander II was assassinated in March 1881.

Both the interior and exterior of this fascinating church are decorated with incredibly intricate mosaics, designed and created by the most prominent Russian artists of the day.

We know that 42 artists were involved in drawing designs for the 700,000 square meters of mosaic icons, but have no idea how many actual artisans participated in their installation.

These doors caught my attention.

This church also contains the first benches in a church in all of Russia, designed for the handicapped and aged. In addition, as was the case with the church we saw this morning, this church features steam heated pipes, but here the steam heat is directly pumped in to the marble benches.

At one point, there is a beautifully detailed altar that appears to be made of intricately carved wood, but it is actually made of Italian marble.

Amazingly, after World War I, the church became a warehouse for rotten potatoes! Then, it was designated to be destroyed on April 27, 1941. World War II intervened to prevent its destruction on April 22, 1941. After World War II, it was used as a warehouse for theater sets. After again escaping destruction, it was closed to the public until 1997, whereupon it finally re-opened in all its dazzling former glory. In fact, during that time, it was euphemistically referred as the Church of the Eternal Scaffolding.

This throne and crown depict the actual site where Alexander II was murdered.

Once we left the church, we took a short walk and then a boat ride down the Neve River. We sat inside, surrounded by glass, because it was raining.  The view was not very good, but we all took advantage of the opportunity to swig a few glasses of champagne.

As we drove through the streets, we were taken aback by the size of some of the government buildings.

People were getting married all over the place today, even though it was pouring.

Cops kept an eye on us.

Our next stop was the Peter and Paul Fortress.

A St. Petersburg landmark, it was the first structure to be built in the city and has been credited as being the birthplace of this phenomenal metropolis.

Technically St. Petersburg’s original citadel, it was never used as a defensive structure. It has a diverse history as a military base, a government building, burial grounds for the Russian czars, and an infamous jail that restrained Russia’s political prisoners.

Founded in 1703 by Peter the Great, who died in 1725, and designed by Domenico Trezzini, it is now the central part of the St. Petersburg Museum of History.

The detail is amazing, especially the incredible amount of gold over the altar, much of which was applied by brushes utilizing the hair of squirrel tails. 

As I am always fascinated with cemeteries, the fact that nine czars, (all members of the Romanov family, of course) and 54 other members of their family are buried here, intrigued me.

In this particular room are monuments to 18 members of the royal family, all of whom are buried below this floor.

As such, it is reported that this is an extremely popular room– people are just dying to get in!

We got back to the ship to quickly prepare for our next outing, and were met with disappointment because our requested early dinner was not waiting for us. I had sent an email to in residence dining, with a copy to the restaurant manager, requesting that food be delivered to our apartment at 5:15 PM. We were told that the email had never been received, so I fired off a rather stern email to the company’s COO, General manager, and restaurant manager. Our food was finally delivered, 10 minutes before we had to leave for our next tour.

As spectacular as our afternoon’s activities were, the evening did not disappoint. We were fortunate to have the Hermitage museum closed and made available just for us. So vast and diverse is the Hermitage collection of fine art, porcelain, and royal regalia that it would take years to view it in its entirety. This amazing museum that we toured today and will see again two days from now, houses over 3,080,000 pieces of Western art. (Soviet and Russian Art is housed in an entirely different museum.) Just to give some appreciation as to what is in the museum, its collections include more than 50 Picassos, 24 Rembrandts, and dozens of paintings by each of Monet, Renoir, Cezanne, Matisse, van Gogh and Gaugin.

In 1941, when World War II was imminent, thousands of workers labored for 24 hours a day over a period of several weeks, to pack and remove all the artwork from the museum and send it out of St. Petersburg. After 23 rail cars had been loaded and departed in July, there was one more train to leave in August, but it did not manage to get out of town because the Nazis had already arrived.

During the war, the workers and their families lived in the cellar of the Hermitage in dormitory style accommodations; the museum was hit with 20,000 strikes from bombs or shrapnel.

We saw pictures of piles of sand placed on all the floors of the museum so they would be available to put out fires if the museum was bombed.

This building was built and served as the winter palace of the Romanovs. In 1837, it was subjected to a fire that burned for three days. During that time, all available workers, and many townspeople, threw the art pieces out the windows to preserve them. Amazingly, not a single piece was stolen or disappeared.

Each of the dozens of rooms we visited was more spectacular than the one before.

But my fascination, both today and during my entire time in St. Petersburg, was with the ornate ceilings.

Not the Louvre, not the Palace of Versailles, not the finest museums in Rome, Florence or New York, have ceilings that can compare with what we saw in the Hermitage.

The staircases were grand and there are 117 of them in the palace!

This particular staircase was called the Jordan staircase, a treasure in its own right.

The word Jordan comes from the Russian word used to describe a hole drilled into ice for ice fishing.

The objects d’art were also grand.

As were the doors.

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This chandelier is made of 7 tons of bronze.

And check out the size of the room housing it.

The family had a chapel in the house.

The famous “Peacock clock” was a gift to Catherine the Great from one of her lovers. Once it was received in St. Petersburg, it took clock making exports two years to assemble.  We were treated to a demonstration of the peacock moving when the clock is wound.

Finally, we adjourned to the private Hermitage Theatre (no doors to the outside),  for champagne a concert by the world famous Andreyev State Russian Orchestra, founded in 1888.

They performed seven pieces for us, but perhaps the most fascinating experience was being able to witness traditional Russian instruments including domras, balalaikas, and guslis (some of these looked like ukuleles and lyres), and the resulting unique symphonic sound.

Finally, it was 11 o’clock and we headed back to the ship where we slept quite soundly.