Tuesday, October 7, 2008

St. Petersburg 08-24-08

On Sunday, we arrived in St. Petersburg, Russia. It is a very lovely town and has a lot of canals and has been referred to as the ‘Venice of the North’.

St. Petersburg is a large city, with about 2 million residents. It is known for the many palaces it has, of which this is just one.

We took a walk along the Neva River where the Naval Museum is located.

This is a church that we visited where several famous former residents are buried, included some Czars.
This is the interior of that church, and yes, that is all real gold!

This is another church we visited called the Church of the Spilled Blood (a famous Russian politician was killed on this site). One of the first things you notice when going through St. Petersburg is how much gold was used in the building of older churches and palaces in the past.

This is an older government building and again, you can see the use of gold here.

This is one of their downtown squares (which all cities in Europe have) with a statute to one of their statesmen.

We spent part of the day going through the Hermitage Museum, which is a former palace and now houses some of the world’s greatest artworks and artifacts. This is the entrance staircase to the museum.

This room houses portraits of all the famous Russian generals who served and died in battles.

This is a tile floor in one of the rotundas in the museum.

This is an old marble-type container with gold trim.

This is an original painting by Leonardo DaVinci.

Here are some old artifacts from Russian history that have been put on display.
Some more artifacts showing outstanding craftsmanship.





This is a hallway in the museum that is decorated with outstanding artwork and of course, extensive use of gold.

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