For The Love of Travel

Rainy and grey day – perfect for visiting the Hermitage museum.  Founded in 1764 when Catherine the Great acquired an impressive collection of paintings from a Berlin merchant. A collection of over 3 million items, including the largest collection of paintings in the world.

Decided to concentrate on the 3rd floor of the General Staff Building (Rossi wing). French salon painting was rather grand, featuring elegant woman with alabaster skin posing coquettishly  – Francis Xavier Winterhalter’s 1958 portrait of Sofia Naryshkina stood out, particularly as a result of the elaborate frame; as did Joseph Desire Court’s 1840 portrait of  demur and wistful looking Princess Ekaterina Scherbatov.

Picasso, Matisse, Gaugin, Renoir, Latour and Van Gogh all were represented. I particularly liked Van Gogh’s, “Thatched Cottages”, and “Bush”. And Renoir’s, “Roses and Jasmine”.

I discovered some new artists – Rockwell Kent from the USA – his “Seal Hunter:North Greenland” was captivating.

Loved Bernard Buffet’s,  “St Petersburg: The Hermitage, Winter Palace”.

A small gallery of Kandinsky’s works, including “Winter Landscape”, was the last hurrah!

Delicious lunch @ Koryushka restaurant, contemporary chic with European and Russian cuisine served on a beach front terrace, with views over the Neva river. Very special!

One of the few days in June that the Grand Peterhof Palace is open, is this evening between 18:00 and 20:00. So, purchased a ticket. A long wait in a queue behind different nationalities’ tour groups…..

The Palace complex is a series of palaces and gardens  commissioned by Peter the Great as a direct response to the Palace of Versailles by Louis 14th of France.  Majestic and elegant, it stretches for 300 metres. Architect Rastrelli was involved in this design as the centrepiece  of the “Russian Versailles”, (as well as the Winter Palace in the Hermitage). 

I’m seeing two of the Museum of Four Cathedrals today.

Church of the Saviour on Spilled Blood – funded by the Imperial Family, the church was constructed over 24 years, between 1883 and 1907, during the reign of Alexander III. The church was built as a memorial to the slain Tsar Alexander II of Russia, who was mortally wounded on the site in 1881. It was closed by the Bolsheviks in the 1930s, but reopened in 1997 after 30 years of restoration work.

Architecturally, the Cathedral differs from Saint Petersburg’s other structures. The city’s architecture is predominantly Baroque and Neoclassical, but the Saviour on Spilled Blood harks back to medieval Russian architecture in the spirit of romantic nationalism. It intentionally resembles the 17th-century Yaroslavl churches and the celebrated St Basil’s Cathedral in Moscow. The church contains over 7500 square metres of mosaics – according to its restorers, more than any other church in the world.

St Issac’s Cathedral, dedicated to Saint Issac of Dalmatia, a patron saint of Peter the Great. The Cathdrals bronze doors, covered in reliefs by Ivan Vitali, are patterned after the celebrated doors of the Battistero di San Giovanni in Florence, designed by Lorenzo Gihberti! Granites and marbles from all parts of Russia decorate the interiors.

Booked in for a meal @ Mansarda Restaurant – with views over St Issac Cathedral.

And if that wasn’t special enough, the restaurant was preparing for a concert that night by singer Elena Temnikova (one of 3 members of the group Serebro, which represented Russia at the Eurovision Song Contest in 2007). She came to do a sound check accompanied by 4 burly security dudes, and as I was about to take her pic, got a firm “nyet” from one of her security team, so once more, complied. A bit naughty, because we guests had to listen to interminable  “odin”, “dva”, “odin”, “dva”…. (one, two, one, two etc). You’d reckon the least one could do is take a pic….but ”nyet!”