Travel Reference
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elite hooked on high culture. The court was graced by poets, artists and philosophers.
Journalism and theatre gained popularity, and an academy of arts was founded. While
her resplendent splurges may have left imperial coffers empty, Elizabeth made her
father's majestic dream a reality.
In 1737 Empress Anna decided to celebrate Russia's victory in the Russo-
Turkish War by having a palace carved in ice for herself. The architect
Peter Eropkin completed an amazing ice palace with turrets 30m tall. Ever
capricious, Anna forced Prince Golitsyn, who had incurred her displeas-
ure, to marry a rather rotund Kalmyk girl inside, before spending the night
and consummating the marriage on an ice bed.
Aristocratic Soul
St Petersburg now displayed all the features of a seriously imperial capital: stately
facade, hierarchical heart and aristocratic soul. The city's physical appearance reflec-
ted the transition. The centre of power moved across the river to the Neva's south
bank. Empress Elizabeth's baroque beauty, the Winter Palace ( CLICK HERE ), was
meant to impress - and how could it not, with more than a quarter of a million exquis-
itely embellished square feet. She forbade any new building to rise higher than her
1000-room, 2000-windowed, multicolumned mansion. The immense Palace Square
(Dvortsovaya pl; CLICK HERE ) could host as many as 50 parading infantry battalions
at once. Across the square was an imposing semicircular structure housing the instru-
ments of statecraft: General Staff, the Treasury and the Foreign Office. Its august
archways led out to a beaming boulevard, the city's central artery, Nevsky pr. The
commanding Admiralty ( CLICK HERE ) stretched along nearly 400m of the south em-
bankment, adorned with ancient heroes such as conqueror Alexander the Great and
sea goddess Isis and topped with a gleaming gold spire. The city's monumental
mélange reinforced its imperial pretension, with each ruler adding a personal stylistic
touch: Peter's restrained baroque, Catherine's refined neoclassicism, Elizabeth's os-
tentatious rococo.
St Petersburg was a city of ranks, literally. The capital's social hierarchy reflected
Peter's image of a well-ordered modern state. To minimise the personal influence of
the old nobility, Peter created a Table of Ranks, which formally assigned social status
on the basis of service to the emperor. The table included 14 stations in the military
 
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