St. Petersburg
A common joke among the older generation in Leningrad during the Soviet times was that they could have lived in three different cities without once moving. They could have been born in St. Petersburg, grown up in Petrograd and then married in Leningrad. Indeed, the city, in the northernmost reaches of Russia has gone through four name changes within a century, if you count the most recent reversion back to St. Petersburg after the fall of the USSR.
St. Petersburg is Russia`s second largest city after Moscow with more than five million inhabitants. Located on the Neva River, it has a strategically important port on the Baltic Sea. St. Petersburg is justly considered one of the most beautiful cities in the world and the most European of all Russian cities. Built by Peter the Great as ‘the window to Europe’ it has always been more Europe-oriented than any other Russian city, whether you take its weather, architecture, or lifestyles. Once made the capital of Russian Empire by Peter the Great St. Petersburg is still rivaling Moscow: it is often referred to as ‘the Northern Capital’ or the ‘Cultural Capital’ of Russia.
St. Petersburg is a city of haunting magnificence, an imperial capital that seems to have been built as a monument to its own passing. Less than three centuries have passed since Peter the Great began building his grand city on the Gulf of Finland, but it is difficult to visit its vast, crystalline squares and palaces without feeling the enormity of the gulf that separates that time from our own. All of which, of course, makes St. Petersburg more evocative of Russia's past than any place except perhaps the Moscow Kremlin. This impression is only deepened by a more familiar acquaintance. The enigmatic homeliness of Peter's cottage and the city's placid canals may contrast with the brooding grandeur of the Winter Palace, but they share with it a graceful stillness that is difficult to forget.
St. Petersburg seems to be enveloped in some poetic veil of enchantment; the city of white nights and drawbridges, splendid sights and museums, variety of elegant architectural styles of all epochs and grim close backyards, contradictory history and unpredictable weather, it attracts people from all over the world with its cultural gorgeousness.
The Hermitage is one of the grandest museums in the world. The rich collections of the museum are exhibited in six magnificent palaces located on the embankment of the Neva River. One can hardly observe in a short time all the three million exhibits presented in 400 rooms. Anyone can find something to one’s taste out of this cornucopia of arts. For those attracted to Russian arts the right choice will be certainly the State Russian Museum. Its collection has over 400 thousand exhibits, featuring all the major schools of Russian fine arts, with all its types and genres from the 10th to the 20th century.
One of the biggest cathedrals in the world, the St. Isaac (Isaakievsky) Cathedral, was formerly the major cathedral of Russia. It took its creators 40 years, 400 kilograms (881,85 pounds) of gold and 16 tons of malachite to build this impressive construction. Ten thousand people can fit inside of it. Probably the most attractive possibility about visiting the Cathedral is that visitors can walk on top of its peak opening a bird's-eye view of the city.
St. Petersburg was founded May 27,1703, by Peter the Great , when he had just wrested its site from the Swedes. The forced construction of a city in a site apparently forbidden by nature cost the lives, according to various accounts, of from 100,000 to 200,000 peasants, collected from all parts of the Russian Empire to perform the necessary labors. He first erected a fortress on the site of the present citadel; and such were the obstacles with which he met in the treacherous character of the soil, the climate, and the insalubrity of the location, that a man of less resolute will would have abandoned the undertaking. But his perseverance triumphed over all difficulties, and in 1712 he declared it his capital, Moscow having been the previous capital of the empire. At his death, however, the city was still a miserable collection of hovels, with a few good buildings.
His successors embellished and almost created it. Even in 1724 the various groups of houses were separated from each other by marshes, and the town was surrounded by forests and deserts. The senate was transferred to St. Petersburg in 1714. The fortress and the admiralty had already been built. The Czarina Anna definitely removed the court to St. Petersburg, which from this time grew rapidly. The winter-palace was built by Elizabeth.
Catharine II in particular constructed the massive canals, which by draining it rendered it far more salubrious, and increased its palaces, its costly dwellings, its churches, and its public edifices; and Alexander I and Nicholas added materially to what she had begun. In 1824 it was visited with a terrible inundation, by which hundreds lost their lives and thousands their entire property. A similar disaster threatens the city at the breaking up of the ice in the Neva every 6eason. In 1887 the great Winter palace, all of whose rooms and labyrinths were not known to any one living, was burned to the ground; but few lives were lost. It was rebuilt with greater splendor and on a better plan in two years from that time. The city was the residence of a great number of foreigners; all the ministers and charges from foreign courts to the Russian government were obliged to reside there.
The city was St Petersburg from 1703-1914 and was the seat of government during that time. Due to anti-German sentiment during WWI, the city was renamed to the more Russian-sounding Petrograd. “We went to bed in Petersburg and woke up in Petrograd!” screamed jingoistic headlines. It was Petrograd from 1914-1924 and that name was an act of a dying empire in a time of chaos.
On 18 February 1917, workers at Petrograd's Putilov steel works went on strike. By 22 February, over half a million people were protesting. The next day, women standing in line for daily bread rations were told there would be none. A spontaneous protest erupted that was joined by workers, the hungry and the dissatisfied. Demands for peace and an end to the autocracy joined those for bread. By 25 February, a general strike had overtaken the city. Military troops were commanded to restore order, but instead of them firing on the crowds, the unthinkable occurred: they broke ranks and joined the protesting mobs. In view of the uncontrollable chaos, Nicholas was forced to abdicate on 2 March 1917, bringing 304 years of Romanov rule to an ignominious end. In place of the disintegrating autocracy, an uneasy dual regime emerged consisting of the Provisional Government (political liberals, reform-minded nobles, and business interests) and the populist, radical Soviet (workers, peasants, soldiers, and sailors).
Uncompromising ruthlessness, combined with the Bolsheviks' platform of peace, bread, and land reform, enabled the relentless Lenin to rouse a fervour that on 25 October culminated in a blank shot fired from the Cruiser Aurora: this was the revolutionary signal. The Winter Palace was "stormed", the Provisional Government barricaded inside was arrested, and Petrograd became the capital of the worldwide socialist revolution. Lenin, who just six months earlier was penning revolutionary tracts in a Swiss garret was now ruler of the largest country on earth.
The city remained the capital until the Empire’s demise following the 1917 Revolution. The Bolsheviks moved the capital back to Moscow in 1918 fearing foreign invasion. On 21 January 1924, Vladimir Lenin, whose health had degenerated after several unsuccessful assassination attempts and three strokes, died at the age of 53. Petrograd did not delay A week later, the city was renamed Leningrad in honor of the man who had incited the Bolshevik Revolution.
On 1 December 1934, Sergei Kirov, Leningrad's popular party boss, was assassinated by a young party functionary. Shortly thereafter, an official statement proclaimed that Kirov had been murdered by enemies of the Soviet Union. It remains unclear whether Stalin ordered Kirov's execution to eliminate a possible popular rival; in any case, his death was a seized as a pretext to arrest and execute unwanted Party members, as well as the so-called "former people" - the nobility, merchants, industrialists, tsarist civil servants, and so on. Thus began Kirov's Flood. In 1935 alone, tens of thousands of people from the greater Leningrad area were arrested, often tortured, and sentenced to years in labour camps. This was a preview of the Great Terror that decimated the country in 1937-1938, when over half a million people were executed and many more died in camps.
It is believed that hundreds of thousands of Leningrad's population of 2.5 million died of starvation, exposure, disease or enemy action since 1 September 1941. The German army reached Leningrad soon after invading Russia on 22 June 1941 but stopped short of taking Russia's second city after facing fierce resistance and decided instead on a blockade. All land communication was cut off and the city subjected to air and artillery bombardment. The harshest winter in decades added to the suffering of Leningrad's starving inhabitants but this was partially eased when Lake Ladoga froze, opening a truck route to bring in food and fuel over the ice. All able-bodied citizens did their bit to defend the city by working in munitions factories, digging defences and serving in the front line, enduring the siege that lasted 872 days.
In September 1991, it was decided to restore the city’s historical name, St. Petersburg. The surrounding region is still known as Leningrad Oblast.
St. Petersburg is home to around 800 bridges, the most famous of which are movable. There are 19 movable bridges in total, and they are raised at specific times (usually early night) and lowered early in the morning. These magnificent works of architecture are terribly inconvenient: after a certain hour, moving between the Petrograd and Central districts suddenly becomes complicated. The Petersburg subway is one of the deepest in the world. The deepest station, Admiralteyskaya, lies at a depth of 86m underground. Deeper subway stations are found only in Kiev and North Korea, where they were intentionally built that far down in case of war.
Even locals usually use special filters and then boil tap water or order water from natural springs located far from the city. So better to buy a 5-liter bottle and feel safe.
In 2018, the Lakhta Center in Russia's St. Petersburg became the tallest building in Europe. At a cost of more than $1.8 billion, it was even more expensive than the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world.
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