FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE

FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE

Saint Petersburg was found-ed by Tsar Peter the Great on

May 27 [O.S. 1703. From 1713 to 1728 and from 1732 to 1918,

Saint Petersburg was the Imperial capital of Russia. In 1918 the central

government bodies moved from Saint Petersburg (then named Petrograd) to

Moscow. It is Russia’s second largest city after Moscow with almost 5 million inhab-

itants. Saint Petersburg is a major European cultural center, and also an important Russian

port on the Baltic Sea.Saint Petersburg is often described as the most

Western city of Russia. It is also the northernmost city in the world to have a population of over one mil-

lion. However, the geographically most Western city of Russia is in reality Kaliningrad, but it is not part of the

mainland Russia. The Historic Centre of Saint Petersburg and Related Groups of Monuments constitute a UNESCO

World Heritage Site. Saint Petersburg is also home to The Hermitage, one of the largest art museums in the world. A large

aint Petersburg is a city and a federal subject (a federal city) of Russia located on the Neva

River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea. In 1914 the name of the

city was changed to Petrograd in 1924 to Leningrad and in 1991 back to Saint

Petersburg.In Russian literature, informal docu-

ments, and discourse, the “Saint” is usually omitted, leaving Peters-

burg. In common parlance Rus-sians may drop “-burg” as well,

leaving only Peter.

s

The Hermitageaint Petersburg is home to more than two hundred museums, many of them hosted in historic buildings. The largest of the museums is the Hermitage Museum, featuring interiors of the former imperial residence and a vast collection of art. The Russian Museum is a large

museum devoted to the Russian fine art spe-cifically. The apartments of some famous Petersburgers, including Alexander Pushkin, Fyodor Dostoyevsky,

Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Feodor Chaliapin, Alex-ander Blok, Vladimir Nabokov, Anna Akhmatova,

Mikhail Zosh-

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ut of six buildings of the main museum complex, four, named the Winter Palace, Small Hermitage, Old Hermitage and New Her-

mitage, are partially open to the public. The other two are the Hermitage Theatre and the Reserve House. The en-

trance ticket for foreign tourists costs four times as much as the fee paid by Russian citizens. How-

ever, the entrance is free of charge the first Thursday of every month for all visi-

tors, and free daily for students and children. The museum is closed

on Mondays. The entrance for individual visitors is

located in the Winter Palace, accessi-

ble from the Court-

yard.

O

The Hermitage

Construction began in 1883 under Alexander III, as a memorial to his father, Alexander II. Work progressed slowly and was finally completed during the reign of Nicho-

las II in 1907. The Imperial family with the support of many private donors provided funding.

The Church is prominently situated along the Griboedov Canal. The embankment at that point runs along either side of a canal. On

March 13, 1881 (Julian date: March 1), as Tsar Alexander’s carriage passed along the embankment, a grenade

thrown by an anarchist conspirator exploded. The tsar, shaken but unhurt, got out of the

carriage and started to remonstrate with the presumed culprit. A

second conspirator took the chance to throw

another bomb, killing him-

self and

A

tempo-rary shrine

was erected on the site of the attack

while the project for a more permanent memorial was under-

taken. It was decided that the section of the street where the assassination had

taken place was to be enclosed within the walls of a church. The embankment was therefore extend-

ed out into the canal to allow the shrine to fit comfort-ably within the building and to provide space on the exterior

wall for a memorial marking the spot where the assassination took place. Inside, an elaborate shrine was constructed on the exact place of

Alexander’s death, garnished with topaz, lazurite and other semi-precious stones. Amid such rich decoration, the simple cobblestones on which the tsar’s

blood was spilled and which are exposed in the floor of the shrine provide a striking