Hermitage Museum

Saint Petersburg / Russia

The State Hermitage Museum is a museum of art and culture in Saint Petersburg, Russia. The second-largest art museum in the world, it was founded in 1764 when Empress Catherine the Great acquired an impressive collection of paintings from the Berlin merchant Johann Ernst Gotzkowsky. The museum celebrates the anniversary of its founding each year on 7 December, Saint Catherine's Day. It has been open to the public since 1852. It attracted 4,956,524 visitors in 2019, ranking it eighth among the most visited art museums in the world.Its collections, of which only a small part is on permanent display, comprise over three million items , including the largest collection of paintings in the world. The collections occupy a large complex of six historic buildings along Palace Embankment, including the Winter Palace, a former residence of Russian emperors. Apart from them, the Menshikov Palace, Museum of Porcelain, Storage Facility at Staraya Derevnya, and the eastern wing of the General Staff Building are also part of the museum. The museum has several exhibition centers abroad. The Hermitage is a federal state property. Since July 1992, the director of the museum has been Mikhail Piotrovsky.Of the six buildings in the main museum complex, five—namely the Winter Palace, Small Hermitage, Old Hermitage, New Hermitage, and Hermitage Theatre—are open to the public. The entrance ticket for foreign tourists costs more than the fee paid by citizens of Russia and Belarus. However, entrance is free of charge the third Thursday of every month for all visitors, and free daily for students and children. The museum is closed on Mondays. The entrance for individual visitors is located in the Winter Palace, accessible from the Courtyard.

Russian Museum

Saint Petersburg / Russia

The State Russian Museum , formerly the Russian Museum of His Imperial Majesty Alexander III , on Arts Square in Saint Petersburg, is the world's largest depository of Russian fine art. It is also one of the largest art museums in the world with total area over 30 hectares.

Central Naval Museum

Saint Petersburg / Russia

Central Naval Museum is a naval museum in St Petersburg, Russia. It is one of the first museums in Russia and one of the world’s largest naval museums, with a large collection of artefacts, models and paintings reflecting the development of Russian naval traditions and the history of the Russian Navy. The museum’s permanent display includes such relics as the Botik of Peter the Great, Catherine II’s marine throne, trophies captured in sea battles, and the personal belongings of prominent Russian and Soviet naval commanders. The collection includes paintings by Ivan Aivazovsky, Alexey Bogolyubov, Lev Lagorio and other marine artists, ship sculpture, navigational instruments, naval equipment and machinery from the 17th to 20th centuries and numerous models of ships. The main exposition consists of nineteen halls. There is a complex of six museum halls for exhibitions.

Pushkin House

Saint Petersburg / Russia

The Pushkin House , formally the Institute of Russian Literature , is a research institute in St. Petersburg. It is part of a network of institutions affiliated with the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Anichkov Bridge

Saint Petersburg / Russia

The Anichkov Bridge is the oldest and most famous bridge across the Fontanka River in Saint Petersburg, Russia. The current bridge, built in 1841-42 and reconstructed in 1906-08, combines a simple form with some spectacular decorations. As well as its four famous horse sculptures , the bridge has some of the most celebrated ornate iron railings in Saint Petersburg. The structure is mentioned in the works of Pushkin, Gogol, and Dostoevsky. The first bridge was built in 1715-16 by order of Peter the Great, and named after its engineer, Mikhail Anichkov. The bridge was made of wood with several spans built on piles of supports lying just above the Fontanka River. It was designed by Domenico Trezzini. Nothing remains of this first bridge. As the city grew and river traffic increased, plans were unveiled in 1721 to create a new drawbridge. The Anichkov Bridge was one of seven three-span stone drawbridges with towers built across the Fontanka River in the late 18th century, of which the Lomonosov Bridge and the Stary Kalinkin Bridge are the two still extant. At that time, the Anichkov Bridge was an especially popular attraction on Nevsky Prospekt, as well as a popular subject for illustrations and paintings. By the 1840s the 18th-century design, especially its large towers, was deemed unsuitable for the growing amount of traffic passing over the Anichkov Bridge along Nevsky Prospekt. In 1841-42 a grander structure, more appropriate to the width of Nevsky Prospekt, was built on the site under the supervision of Lt. General A. D. Gotman. The new bridge was made of stone, and had three spans closed off with gently sloping arches. This simple, concise form corresponded well with the massive cast-iron fencing bordering Anichkov Bridge and mermaid cast-iron railings, originally designed by Karl Friedrich Schinkel for the Palace Bridge in Berlin. However, the bridge's stone arches were a continual source of problems, and in 1906-08 the bridge had once again to be reconstructed and its arches reinforced.

Apartment Museum of Joseph Brodsky

Saint Petersburg / Russia

Apartment Museum of Joseph Brodsky is an informal memorial museum, created in 2006 on behalf of the governor of St. Petersburg, in order to preserve the memory of the cultural and literary period 1960-1990, the central figure of which is the poet and Nobel laureate, Joseph Brodsky. The concept of the future exposition deals Anna Akhmatova Museum. The apartment is in the Muruzi House. The museum formally does no operate because the founders of the museum failed to acquire the whole apartment, therefore it is still in the status of a residential unit.

Admiralty, Saint Petersburg

Saint Petersburg / Russia

The Admiralty is the former headquarters of the Admiralty Board and the Imperial Russian Navy in St. Petersburg, Russia and the current headquarters of the Russian Navy.The edifice was rebuilt in the nineteenth century to support the Tsar's maritime ambitions. The original design was a fortified shipyard which was later surrounded by five bastions and further protected by a moat.The Empire Style edifice visible today lining the Admiralty Quay was constructed to Andreyan Zakharov's design between 1806 and 1823. Located at the western end of the Nevsky Prospekt, The Admiralty with its gilded spire topped by a golden weather-vane in the shape of a small sail warship , is one of the city's most conspicuous landmarks and the focal point of old St. Petersburg's three main streets - Nevsky Prospect, Gorokhovaya Street, and Voznesensky Avenue - underscoring the importance Peter I placed on Russia's Navy. Vladimir Nabokov, writer and native of St. Petersburg, wrote a short story in May 1933 entitled "The Admiralty Spire."

Saints Peter and Paul Cathedral, Saint Petersburg

Saint Petersburg / Russia

The Peter and Paul Cathedral is a Russian Orthodox cathedral located inside the Peter and Paul Fortress in St. Petersburg, Russia. It is the first and oldest landmark in St. Petersburg, built between 1712 and 1733 on Hare Island along the Neva River. Both the cathedral and the fortress were originally built under Peter the Great and designed by Domenico Trezzini. The cathedral's bell tower is the world's tallest Orthodox bell tower. Since the belfry is not standalone, but an integral part of the main building, the cathedral is sometimes considered the highest Orthodox Church in the world. There is another Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul Church in St. Petersburg, located in Petergof.

Saint Isaac's Square

Saint Petersburg / Russia

Saint Isaac's Square or Isaakiyevskaya Ploshchad , known as Vorovsky Square between 1923 and 1944, in Saint Petersburg, Russia is a major city square sprawling between the Mariinsky Palace and Saint Isaac's Cathedral, which separates it from Senate Square. The square is graced by the equestrian Monument to Nicholas I. The Lobanov-Rostovsky House on the west side of the square was designed by Auguste de Montferrand. It may be described as an Empire style building that has an eight-column portico facing the Admiralty building. The main porch features the twin statues of Medici lions on granite pedestals; they were made famous by Pushkin in his last long poem, The Bronze Horseman. Nearby is Quarenghi's Horse Guards' Riding Hall , in part inspired by the Parthenon and flanked by the marble statues of the Dioscuri, by Paolo Triscornia. Opposite the cathedral is the Mariinsky Palace, built in 1829-1844 for Grand Duchess Maria Nikolayevna. Currently the palace houses the Saint Petersburg Legislative Assembly. In front of the palace is the 97-metre-wide Blue Bridge, which used to be the widest in Saint Petersburg. Spanning the Moika River, the bridge is usually perceived as the extension of the square, although in fact it forms a separate square, called Mariyinskaya. To the right from the bridge is so-called Neptune's Scale, with a granite top. This is a stele which marks water levels during major floods. To the east of the cathedral is the six-storey Hotel Astoria, designed by Fyodor Lidval. It opened in 1912 and was one of the most luxurious hotels in the Russian Empire. Adjacent to the Astoria is the hotel Angleterre, which is remembered as the deathplace of poet Sergei Yesenin. The building found at the corner of Malaya Morskaya Street is associated with Fyodor Dostoyevsky, who lived there in 1848-1849. At this period, he published his first work of fiction, White Nights. The Russian Institute of Plant Breeding named after Academician Nikolai Vavilov is located in two neo-Renaissance buildings. The institute has a unique collection of 160,000 cultivated plants, which Vavilov collected while travelling in every continent from 1921 to 1940. After the end of the war, a journal published in London reported that Vavilov's collection was lost during the Siege of Leningrad. However, the report was false: although many starved to death, the institute's staff would not consume a single grain of rice or potato tuber from the collection.One of the last buildings to be erected on the square was the trapezoidal red-granite German Embassy , by the architect Peter Behrens. The building is a reference point in the history of Western architecture, as it was the first specimen of Stripped Classicism, a style that enjoyed immense popularity in Stalinist Russia and Nazi Germany.