As a well-travelled leader, Russian Tsar, Peter the Great came to realise that his nation was falling behind developments elsewhere in the civilised world. He could also see that the political culture of Moscow would resist significant reform. In response he chose to build St Petersburg, a new Western-facing capital city on the shore of the Baltic Sea.
Today, 300 years later, St Petersburg remains the most European of all major cities in Russia. It's relatively young history has also left it with a similar architectural look, both classic and memorable. Many districts remind you of other European cities. For example, the area around the Hermitage offers hints of traditional Italian plazas, while canals around the city are reminisent of Amsterdam. Peter the Great spent four months learning the art of boat building in Amsterdam.
Garry and I flew into St Petersburg early-evening on December 20. The sun had already set and the grouns was dusted with several inches of fresh snow. Our guide explained that we'd arrived shortly after the city's first winter snow fall. As has been the pattern all year, Northern Europe is experiencing an unusually warm start to winter. Temperatures across Iceland, Finland and Northern Russia have been at record highs in December. St Petersburg would have normally experienced snow cover for more than a month and its rivers would long since frozen.
It seemed that we'd chosen the perfect time to visit Russia. Throughout our travels we saw a light covering of snow while still enjoying temperatures well above zero most days. This made it almost pleasant to be outdoors for extended periods, as well as making it easy to move around. The light snow cover meant that we were able to obtain classic Russian winter photos without the accompanying physcial duress.
St Petersburg was delightful. It was a surprisingly pictureaque city, easy to traverse and filled with many visual highlights. We spent our first morning on a private bus tour of the city's most popular sights. The first stop was a truly stunning experience, one that set the tone for the rest of our day. Just before dawn broke, in the fading winter darkness, our bus stopped outside Smolny Cathedral.
Imagine this. As our bus drew to a halt we were greeted by a towering, ornate, baroque church painted in a muted sky-blue, trimmed with white edging and set in a courtyard covered in bright, white snow. Similar low-level buildings framed both sides of the plaza. The dusky setting, early morning quiet and fresh snow created a true visual feast. It was as if we'd stepped into a living fairy tale, with Cinderella likely to appear at any moment, dropping a glass slipper as she fled the scene.
From here we went on to visit Church on Spilled Blood, a colourful ornate onion-domed capped church; St Issac's, a gold-domed cathedral and Aurora, a mothballed cruiser from the Russo-Japanese War of 1905. In 1917, the ship's forward canon had fired a blank round in the direction of the Winter Palace. This incident marked the start of the October Revolution that culminated in the creation of a communist state. Today you can tour the ship free of charge, moored on the opposing bank of the Nervay River, across from the Winter Palace.
Our afternoon was spent touring the Hermitage, St Petersburg's single most famous location. The Lonely Planet describes it best. "There are art galleries, there are museums, there are great museums of the world and then there is the Hermitage." The complex consists of five buildings fronting the river for more than 500 metres. The grandest building is the Winter Palace, a baroque building painted in deep green, again with clean white trim. It's the fourth such structure on this site, the earlier three being successively razed to make way for a bolder, more dramatic building.
As you tour the Hermitage, you gain a sense of the staggering wealth enjoyed by Russia's Tsar and family at a time when most of the nation's population were eeking out a subsistance living. It's easy to imagine why revolution eventually overtook the Tsarist state. The gilt-edged Jordan staircase alone is a staggering room, while the even more ornate, gilted Armorial Hall, simply took our breath away.
The art collection in the Hermitage is equally staggering. We wandered past dozens of Rembrants, Picassos, Van Goghs, Titians and numerous other masters, both modern and old. Perhaps the most astonishing room was the Loggia of Raphael, a pain-staking reproduction of the Vatican's famous painted corridor. Catherine the Great was so taken by this venue in Rome she ordered her own reproduction - perhaps the ultimate tourist souvinier. Today, Vatican scholars visit the Hermitage to research restoration of the original Loggia.
Read on for more adventures in St Petersburg, including several postcard moments.
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