Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Kazan Cathedral
Curving
Kazan Cathedral
(daily 9am-6pm; Nevsky prospekt), built between 1801 and
1811,wasmodelledonStPeter'sinVaticanCityandisuniqueindie-straightStPetersburg.
The cathedral was built to house a venerated icon, Our Lady of Kazan, reputed to have
appeared miraculously overnight in Kazan in 1579 and later transferred to St Petersburg,
where it resided until its disappearance in 1904. In Soviet times the cathedral housed the
MuseumofAtheism,dedicatedtoprovingthat“religionistheopiumofthepeople”.Today
it teems once more with worshippers.
The Church of the Saviour on the Spilled Blood
The multicoloured, onion-domed
ChurchonSpilledBlood
at 26 Kanala Groboedova em-
bankment (Thurs-Tues 11am-7pm, last entry 6pm; R250, student R150;
cathedral.ru
;
Nevskyprospekt)wasbuiltin1882ontheveryspotwhereTsarAlexanderIIwasassassin-
ated by student radicals a year earlier. With a stunning mosaic-covered interior, the church
is one of St Petersburg's most striking landmarks, quite unlike the dominant Neoclassical
architecture.
The Russian Museum
The Mikhailovsky Palace, worth a visit for its beautifully decorated rooms alone, houses
the main part of the
Russian Museum
(4 Inzhenernaya ul.; Mon 10am-5pm, Wed &
Fri-Sun until 6pm, Thurs 1-9pm; R220, student R50;
rusmuseum.ru
; Gostiny dvor). Its
collection of Russian art is the world's finest, ranging from fourteenth-century icons to
the particularly impressive avant-garde collection from the early twentieth century in the
Benois Wing.
The Summer Garden
Most popular of all St Petersburg's public gardens is the
Summer Garden
(Wed-Sun
10am-8pm;
rusmuseum.ru
; Gostiny dvor) on Kutuzov Embankment, commissioned by
PetertheGreatin1704andrebuiltbyCatherinetheGreatintheinformalEnglishstylethat
survives today. Also charming are the Mikhailovsky Gardens behind the Russian Museum
(May-Sept daily 10am-10pm, rest of the year until 8pm, closed in April; same website),
and Marsovo Pole (the Field of Mars) on the other side of the River Moyka where a flame
burns for the fallen of the Revolution and civil war (1917-21).
The Admiralty and Decembrists' Square
The
Admiralty
, perched at the northwestern end of Nevsky prospect (Admiralteyskaya),
was founded in 1704 as a fortified shipyard. It extends 407m along the waterfront from
Palace Square to
Decembrists
'
Square
, named after a group of reformist officers who,
in December 1825, marched three thousand soldiers into the square in a doomed attempt
to proclaim a constitutional monarchy. Today, Decembrists' Square is dominated by the
Bronze Horseman
, Falconet's 1778 statue of Peter the Great and the city's unofficial sym-
bol.
