.Saint Petersburg was founded in 1709 by Peter I, also known as Peter the Great. Peter the Great was a forward thinking Czar. He hated many of the unneccessary Czarist traditions. Many Czars at that time could not even read or write because they always had somebody else do it for them! But, Peter the Great was different.
In the late 1600's and early 1700's Peter set out to make Russia a European force. In the process, he conquered a large amount of land from the Swedes. Part of that land is where Saint Petersburg now sits. Peter built his new capital there in order to move the power away from the old Czarist traditions in Moscow and to create a powerful port to trade with the European countries. Peter revered the great European powers and wished to modernize Russia with their trade influences.
Want to know more about Peter the Great? Check out this website.
Want to know more about all the Czars? Check out this website.
 | This was one of the first things we saw in St. Petersburg-- a McDonalds! They have spelled the word "McDonalds" in the Russian alphabet. In Russia, very few signs are in English (I don't think I've been to any other major cities in the world with such few signs in English!) So we had to learn the Russian alphabet in order to figure out where we were going! It made every day more of an adventure! We learned some Russian words along the way too! This McDonalds happens to sit on the famous Nevsky Prospekt, a 4km long street which runs through the center of Saint Petersburg. |
| This gold-domed building is St. Isaac's Cathedral, one of the most well-known cathedrals in Saint Petersburg. It was designed by an Italian architect named Montferrand and was built from 1818 to 1858. |  |
 | This photo shows the Hermitage, which is one of the world's top art museums. The museum is housed in the Czar's old Winter Palace. |
| The Winter Palace was badly damaged in World War II when St. Petersburg was under attack. However, the entire palace has beeen renovated and many of the rooms are identical to how ther were during the time of the Czars. This photo shows the ceiling of one of the rooms in the palace. You can visit the Hermitage museum website and go on a virtual tour of the palace rooms yourself. Some of my favorite parts of the palace were the main staircase and the Malachite room. You can also view all of the artwork in the Hermitage Museum. Famous artists include Matisse, Gaughin, and Renoir. |  .
If you link to this Hermitage website and you get error messages saying that you might not be able to read some Russian characters, don't worry about it. Just forge on... you probably don't know Russian anyway! This website is really great and you must check it out! |
 | This photo shows a portion of the Alexander Nevsky Monastery. This monatery was built by Peter the Great in 1710 to honor Prince Alexander Novgorod, or Alexander Nevsky. Who is Alexander Nevsky?Find out on this website! You can see more: photos of the outside of the monastery, photos of inside some of the monastery buildings, and a monastery map. This monastery is also home to a huge graveyard where many famous Russians are buried. You can see Tchaichovsky's and Dostoevsky's graves on this website. |
| The rock musician POE has a song that begins, "I live at the end of a five and a half minute hallway...". I truly understood the meaning of this song when we stayed at the Hotel Moscow (don't let the name fool you, it's in St. Petersburg), shown in this photo. Literally, it took almost 5 minutes to walk from the elevator that brought you from the lobby, down the hall to my room! The hotel is of Communist times and fits into the stereotypically EXTRA-LARGE yet super-simplistic architechture of that time. Our hotel was in a great location, being at the end of Nevsky Prospekt and across the street from the Alexander Nevsky Monastery. |  |
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This photo shows the Church of the Resurrection of Christ or the Church of our Saviour on the Spilled Blood. I guess the Russians couldn't make up their minds on the name! It is built on the spot where Emperor Alexander II was assassinated in March 1881. The architecture was directly inspired by St. Basil's Cathedral in Moscow. |
| This photo shows a closer view of the architecture of the Church of the Resurrection of Christ. This church was my favorite one that I saw in Russia. I liked it even better than Saint Basil's Cathedral in Moscow! |  |
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Another up-close view of the architecture of the Church of the Resurrection of Christ. |
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