ST. PETERSBURG - St. Petersburg, Helsinki and Tallinn - page 86

Now begin spinning to the left. The Art Nouveau TrinityBridge (Troitsky Most)—one
of St. Petersburg's longest and most beautiful—was built in 1903, its design having beat
out a submission by Gustav Eiffel. Before the 1750s, no permanent bridges spanned the
Neva; one crossed only on pontoon bridges (in the summer) or a frozen river (in winter).
Some years, St. Petersburgers got stranded where they were and had to simply wait for the
river either to freeze enough to walk on or to thaw enough for the bridges. Just beyond
the bridge, you can faintly see trees marking the delightful Summer Garden —once the
private garden for Peter the Great's cute little Summer Palace, and now a public park and a
wonderful place for a warm-weather stroll (for details, see here ) .
A bit farther upriver, on the other side of the river (not quite visible from here), are two
more sights you may see if you venture farther afield on a bus or boat tour. The cruiser
Aurora (moored along the Petrogradskaya embankment, around the corner from the Peter
and Paul Fortress) fired the shot that signaled the start of Vladimir Lenin's first assault in
the October Revolution of 1917. Halfway between the fortress and the Aurora , along the
Petrovskaya embankment, is Peter the Great's log cabin, entombed in a small 19th-cen-
tury brick house in a tiny park. Peter lived here briefly in 1703.
Closer to you, on the left side of the river, you'll see the stoutly walled Peter and Paul
Fortress, with its slender golden spire (for details, see here ). St. Petersburg was born here
in 1703, when Peter the Great began building this fortress to secure territory he had won
in battle with the Swedes. Think for a moment about how strategic this location is, at the
mouth of the Neva River. The Neva is very short (only 46 miles), but it's an essential link in
a vital series of shipping waterways. The Neva flows from Lake Ladoga, which itself feeds
(via a network of canals) into Russia's “mother river,” the Volga—Europe's longest river,
which cuts north-to-south through the Russian heartland all the way to the Caspian Sea.
The Volga also connects to the Moskva River, the Black Sea, and the Danube. That makes
the Neva the outlet for all Russian waterways to the Baltic Sea, and from there, to all of
Europe and beyond. In other words, you could sail from Iran to Volgograd (formerly Stal-
ingrad) to Istanbul to Budapest to Moscow to Lisbon—but you would have to go through
St. Petersburg.
Turning farther left, you'll spot the first of the two giant, pink rostralcolumns that flank
Strelka. Inspired by similar towers built by ancient Greeks and Romans to celebrate naval
victories, these columns are decorated with anchors and studded with the prows of ships.
Once topped by gaslights (now electric), the pillars trumpet St. Petersburg's nautical herit-
age. (A similar column stands in the middle of New York City's Columbus Circle.) Facing
Strelka is the Old Stock Exchange (Beurs), flanked by yellow warehouses.
Just to the left, the turreted pastel-blue building is Peter the Great's Kunstkamera, a
sort of ethnographical museum built around the czar's original collection (described next).
“Kunstkamera” and “Hermitage” are both European words and concepts that Peter the
Great imported to class up his new, European-style capital.
Circling a bit farther to the left, the yellow buildings at the end of the bridge (just right
of the Hermitage) are the Admiralty, the geographical center of St. Petersburg and the
headquarters of Peter the Great's imperial navy.
▲ Kunstkamera (Кунсткамера) —Peter the Great, who fancied himself a scientist,
founded this—the first state public museum in Russia—in 1714. He filled it with his per-
sonal collections, consisting of “fish, reptiles, and insects in bottles,” scientific instru-