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Russia
2007 Architecture in St. Petersburg |
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The Church on Spilled Blood, along the Griboyedov Canal. It was built by Czar Alexander III as a memorial to his father, Alexander II, who was assassinated on the spot in 1881. |
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The Church on Spilled Blood was modeled on St. Basil's Cathedral in Moscow. |
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The Church on Spilled Blood. |
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The Church on Spilled Blood. |
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An apartment along a St. Petersburg backstreet. |
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Many of St. Petersburg's downtown buildings are being renovated. Here you can see the unfinished part on the left and the completed part on the right. St. Petersburg is full of fantastic buildings, many of which are in bad shape. This building has probably just been painted, not really renovated, but it's a start. |
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During our visit, St. Petersburg was celebrating what they call "White Nights", which refers to the time in the middle of the summer when the days are longest. St. Petersburg is so far north that the sun never sets fully. It drops below the horizon but the light never goes away completely. This picture was taken at 11:24 PM. |
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This is 12:25 AM, just after midnight. |
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I woke up at 2:00 AM one night to see what the sky looked like. This picture was taken at 2:24 AM. The sun has set, but you can still see the glow off to the right. |
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I happened to be awake at just the right time to see these fireworks off toward the north. I never heard for sure why there were fireworks in the middle of the night, but I think it may have had something to do with the celebration of White Nights. This picture was taken at 2:25 AM. |
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A group of buildings outside my hotel room. |
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The Hermitage. Today it is an art museum. According to Wikipedia, it is the largest museum in the world, with more than three million works of art. This building is the Winter Palace; the Hermitage is actually a collection of buildings, including this one and a few smaller buildings. The Winter Palace was orginally built as yet another palace for the Czars. |
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The Alexander Nevsky Monestary. There is a cemetary on this site that holds the graves of famous Russians, including Tchaikovsky, Dostoyevsky, and Rimsky-Korsakov. |
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The General Staff Building, across the square from the Hermitage. |
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Another view of the General Staff Building. |
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The Winter Palace, on a cloudy morning. |
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The main river in St. Petersburg, the Neva River, has several islands. On one of them, Peter the Great built the first major building in St. Petersburg, the Peter and Paul Fortress. The most distinctive building in the fortress is the church, with the tall steeple. |
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The Peterhof Palace, about an hour outside of downtown St. Petersburg. This was Peter the Great's favorite getaway. The canal in this picture connects directly to the Gulf of Finland, on the Baltic Sea. Peter the Great was a sailor and loved being close to the water. |
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Catherine the Great built herself a gigantic palace outside of the city as well. This is the ballroom. |
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The Russian Czars liked the Baroque style, and most of their architects were Italian. Several of the top architects made a career out of designing buildings for the Russian Czars. |
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