Exploring Imperial St. Petersburg (Part One)

Many major cities around the world have arisen organically - perhaps they surround a natural harbor, or maybe they sprung up along the banks of a mighty river as traders and farmers brought their products to sell and barter with others. Some cities, though, arise through the whims of one person, someone who decided that this place right here could use a city.

Welcome to St. Petersburg, Russia, a city conjured up in the imagination of Peter the Great, a man whose idea would shift the leanings of an empire and, tragically, cost the lives of thousands, if not millions, as the streets, canals, and mansions of this grand city were built on their backs.

I arrived in St. Petersburg in early June 2018 for two days as part of a Baltic Cruise with my mother. Out of all the destinations we were supposed to be visiting on this adventure, St. Petersburg stood out to her as the raison d'être, and the whole trip revolved around our time spent in this imperial city. Due to the limitations of our US passports, we lacked a visa to enter the city on our own without a guide, so therefore selected the two jam packed days of sightseeing through the cruise ship's excursions. What we saw spanned the city and the countryside, taking us to many of the city's highlights. As my first entrée into Russia, it served as an interesting look at a country that (still) has tangled political interactions with my home country.

Throughout our two days - surely not enough to do the place real justice - we saw a number of different things, contradictory things too. Grand palaces and crumbling Soviet style buildings. Self deprecating humor and realness alongside some gruff characters. My two day tour barely managed to scratch the surface to this great city and even more perplexing society, but it is my fervid belief that we must travel to better understand those we share the world with. Though I walk away with perhaps more questions than I had before I entered, I was glad to get a glimpse of life way on the other side of the earth from where I call home.

*A quick note about photo quality - we were in a real hurry to rush through all of the places we visited, to keep up with our tour guide, to ensure that we had time for each stop along the tour. Some pictures could (and should) be better, but with little time to set up each shot - you either get a picture, or you don't - the quality sadly suffered a bit. Hopefully you will still enjoy a tour of this beguiling city!

Day 1 Morning: Meeting Our Tour Group

Arriving into port, all of those who were taking an organized tour headed into the ship's main theater to be grouped based on arrival time. This was a fateful moment, one that would impact our next two days completely in unexpected (and certainly not necessarily pleasant) ways. This simple twist of fate, though, was not yet to be revealed. We still had to wait to disembark and head to our buses.

When you arrive in St. Petersburg by cruise ship, you have to bring your passport and get it stamped before legally entering the country. This was not something I've ever seen done at any other port in all my travels, and you also had to get a stamp leaving the country each day as well. Once we passed passport control, we headed to our prescribed bus, all based on the number sticker we were wearing. Our fate had not yet entirely been decided by this point, but in some ways it was too late. However, it was not until we sat down that fate would play its cruelest trick, by grouping us with a family of around 10 people that would have complete and total disregard for the rules of the tour. At the time of boarding the bus and choosing our seats, we had not yet known what awaited us.

Once everyone boarded the bus, we were introduced to our tour guides, whose names I will purposefully leave out. There were forty of us per bus, and each group of forty would be further restricted to twenty per guide. Both tour guides were young and knowledgeable, somewhat charismatic, and interesting in their own way. What I give them the most credit for, though, was their ability to keep their cool despite all the sh^t that went down throughout the tour. All I can say is that I hope my tour guide still has his job, and/or that our group didn't drive him to drink too much to excess (though he certainly deserved a few strong ones if he did).

As we were given the lay of the land in terms of what to expect from the tour, how to operate our headphones (::ahem to the group who disregarded their headphones for most of the trip causing you to get lost::), and where we were headed, as well as pertinent contextual information, we settled in to what would be a long two days of exploring this perplexing and beautiful city.

One of the things you'll notice in my pictures is the blue skies. According to our guides, St. Petersburg gets about 50 days of sunlight a year (good place to put a city, Peter the Great!), and we were incredibly lucky to get two beautiful days back to back. The weather really did give an overall cheery impression of the imperial parts of the city - you could see why someone would be drawn to building an empire here - even if, having come equipped with some previous readings, you knew that the entire city was complete and utter folly.

After we drove through the streets and passed some rather unimpressive looking Soviet style apartment buildings, we finally reached the nicer parts of the city, the parts us plebeians would never have been allowed to gawk at so openly in years past. But as we turned down a few streets along one of the city's many canals, we made it to our first stop, filled with intrigue, deception, and ultimately murder.

Stop 1: Yusupov Palace

It's not everyday that you get to walk into the house that's the scene of one of the world's most famous assassinations.

Yet, here we were, standing in front of the house where Rasputin, that infamous rogue who had weaseled his way into the inner circle of Tsar Nicolas II and Tsarina Alexandra's good graces, was murdered.

To give credit where credit is due, he didn't die without a good fight. Having been poisoned, beaten, shot, and thrown into the frozen Neva River, there's a suggestion that the ice he was found underneath had fingernail claw marks, suggesting all the efforts to murder him were for naught - except for that final dunking, where he ultimately drowned.

But all that was not to be revealed until the end of the tour. To begin, we walked through the impressive halls, including the staircase leading upstairs to the living quarters. Evidence of the family's immense wealth is evident on all of the surfaces, whether it was through marble, wood, paintings, or textiles, the Yusupov family was one of imperial Russia's wealthiest and most important residents.

Built in the later 1700's, this palace was eventually purchased by the Yusupov family, one of St. Petersburg's wealthiest, in 1830. Eventually, the palace was seized by the Bolsheviks during the October Revolution, but was given over to educators to use as a sort of retreat. Thankfully, they saw the value of preserving the interiors, and most of the palace retains a lot of its original charm.

The interiors are a collection of almost every type of architectural style, from ancient Greek, to Roman and Pompeiian influences, to Rococo and almost everything in between. There's not a roof that couldn't just use one more flourish, or an arch missing - everything is everywhere, a clear demonstration of the wealth this family possessed on obvious display.

Everyone needs their own personal literal home theater, right?

As we descended back towards the entrance, we were about to switch gears. Upstairs, you tour the sumptuous home, but as we began to make our way towards the lower levels, towards the part of the house where Rasputin met his end, the setting changes a bit. Hallways that had once been covered with portraits are now bare, and you walk down narrow staircases and into tight doorways, you finally enter the scene of the assassination.

Lured by the promise of being introduced to Prince Felix Yusupov's young beautiful wife, Princess Irina, Rasputin came to the palace anticipating...let's just say, a different type of evening than the one he encountered. As the conspirator's waited, Rasputin and Felix Yusupov spent hours together, as the poison in the wine he was served seemed to have no ill effect. A tense wait endured, as the Prince checked in with his co-conspirators. Eventually, he could wait no longer, and pulled out a gun to shoot Rasputin in the back while he was distracted. This shot, though, did not kill Rasputin, as he eventually rose, was shot again, climbed to the streets, was beaten, and eventually dragged into the Neva, where he still struggled below the water until he drowned.

That's definitely one way to get assassinated.

It's fascinating, though, to walk in these rooms and encounter the wax figures reenacting the scenes. My initial impression was that it was a bit hokey, but it really does help you envision what the event would have looked like. It seems, too, that our guided tour was lucky, as these rooms are not always available to visitors to the Yusupov Palace. Those wishing to visit this area of the palace should follow the instructions of this link to get a guided tour, or ask at the ticket counter upon arrival.

Website: Yusupov Palace

Stop 2: Sail Along the Neva River

As I mentioned above, the founding of St. Petersburg sprang from the imagination of one man, the person to whom the city was named after, Peter the Great. Whether or not it was a wise idea to build a city so far removed from the rest of your empire in a swampy, desolate, cold, windy and rainy location is perhaps no longer the point - the city was built, and somehow, despite all odds (again, as mentioned above, not without the cost of an estimated 30,000 - 100,000 lives) became a thriving capital atop the various islands that formed along the Neva River mouth. This website has some images at the bottom of what the area looked like prior to the city's construction, and helps give visitors a better idea of the context of this improbable city.

To come to St. Petersburg and not get a tour of this important river would be silly. Thankfully, our two day tour included a 45 minute or so sail along the Neva River aboard a long, low boat, as our tour guides continued to narrate the sights around the city. Below, is a brief glimpse of our travels.

Boarding our vessel.

St. Michael's Castle

The very modest (by St. Petersburg standards) Summer Palace of Peter the Great, located on the grounds of the Summer Garden. If I had had more time to visit the city, this would be on my list of destinations to visit.

On the left is the less modest Winter Palace, now known as the Hermitage Museum. On the right you can see the Admiralty Embankment, right near the Bronze Horseman statue of St. Peter the Great, and a view of the golden dome of St. Isaac's Cathedral, which we visit later.

St. Isaac's.

The Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography, or the Kunstkamera, founded in 1714 by Peter the Great.

The dreaded Peter and Paul Fortress, seen above, was the first structure built in the city, thus, the location where St. Petersburg was officially founded. This fortress was built originally to protect the Russian empire from enemies abroad, it is also the home of the Imperial Family's final resting place, while also serving as a dreaded prison for some of the city's most notorious political prisoners. We visited this as our last stop on our second day, though perhaps not as long as we should have (::ahem:: family mentioned above).

Troitskiy Bridge, built in 1903.

There was much to see along our cruise, too much to take pictures of. However, getting a view of St. Petersburg from this vantage point helped give us (or at least me) a better understanding of the city we'd be exploring for the rest of our two days.

But before then, we had to go see about another assassination.

Stop 3: The Church of the Savior on the Spilled Blood

With a name that dramatic, you know the place had to be something special. And this church, our first in Russia, was impressive in terms of its outside appearance (though it was under renovation when we were there) as well as its interior.

But first, some backstory. We all know about the Russian Revolution of 1917. But for those who have not studied Russian history as closely as perhaps our history teachers would have liked (::ahem:: yours truly), I was glad I took the chance to read up about the city before arriving. In the book Sunlight at Midnight (which I HIGHLY recommend), the author, W. Bruce Lincoln, does a great job of shedding light on this incredibly interesting city. There, he gives a back story of all the events that led up to Red October, including years of strife that the poorer members of St. Petersburg society suffered, despite all of the glitz, glamor, and immense wealth around them. Sensing an opportunity to dispose of the Tsar, a group of conspirators called the "People's Will," threw a bomb at Alexander II's carriage, causing damage and killing a guard, as well as injuring others nearby, but the Tsar was left unscathed. For some reason, he decided to leave his bullet proof carriage, when another conspirator lobbed another bomb, this time landing at the feet of Alexander. This last attempt was successful - though he survived until he was taken to the Winter Palace, his whole body had been torn apart during the assassination attempt, and he succumbed to the injuries later that day of March 1, 1881.

His son, Alexander the III, decided to build a church on the exact spot that his father had been attacked in the Russian style, much unlike a lot of the city's more classical architecture. Construction began in 1883, and finished in 1907. After falling into disrepair, and badly looted during the revolution, the church was closed for many years. In 1970, the church became associated with the Cathedral of St. Isaac's, and was born again as a museum. Today, visitors can access both the exterior grounds, full of characters selling all sorts of knickknacks, ice cream, or photo taking opportunities. But for those looking to witness incredible artwork - such as the intricate and implacable mosaics of the church's interior, this is a stop well worth taking.

Of course, if you're on the same tour that I was on, you'd have no choice (but you'd hardly be sad about it).

Everything about the design of the space - including the fence that surrounds the church - is highly intricate and beautifully designed. It can be hard to remember that this was the site of an assassination, and not just a celebration of artistic excellence.

Before the group entrance, there's a space to get your picture taken in imperial get-ups, though, like all things in a touristy area, the experience is not free.

Double-headed eagles, the symbol of the Russian Imperial family, can be seen on the spires of the church.

This sign made me laugh - it's not often that I'm admonished to leave behind my ice cream (which, of course we didn't have, but still).

Every inch of the church's interior is covered with highly decorative mosaics, in almost an overwhelming fashion. There's nowhere to look that isn't eye grabbing or impressive - even the windows with just a simple flower vase, are beautiful in their simplicity, especially in a place where simplicity is not the norm.

This begins to give you an idea of the sheer size and scope of the space - you'll notice you aren't seeing any people in these pictures, and that's because I took these images over their heads. So imagine being my height - pretty tall for a female at nearly 6' - and still being dwarfed by the sheer size and scale of the space. Couple that with the amount of workmanship that had to go into covering every inch of space with some type of design, and you begin to understand the impressiveness that is the Church on the Spilled Blood.

You might also get the sense that the images you see on the walls look like intricate paintings, but instead they are highly detailed mosaics, each design created through the selection of very tiny tiles.

The altar.

Ben and I have been to some seriously impressive churches and cathedrals in our day. Each one, of course, is beautiful and special in their own ways. This one, though, stands out for its interesting artistry. Like Saint Marco's in Venice, the use of mosaics is somewhat overwhelming in a pleasurable way. To really get a good grasp on the nuances of the scenes, though, I'd recommend going individually and not as a tour, though having the guide to give you context was handy. Balancing between your need for context and independence is something that should be considered before heading to special places like this.

Back outside, we were only given a few to take a few more images of the church before it was off to lunch.

I couldn't resist an urge, though, to get a picture of some nesting dolls, festooned with some of Russia's greatest leaders, including one very special comrade from my own country.

But I digress.

Time for lunch.

To be continued....