The Paris of Russia

St Petersburg is the "Paris" of Russia: essentially built by Peter The Great in 1703 as a "royal city" and it shows! Classic French-Baroque buildings downtown but as you step back into suburbia the "classic" remains but the dirt creeps in, big time! Lets say it is the "grubby" Paris of Russia. St Petersburg has almost 5 million people, half the population of Moscow and Europe's fourth most populous city. It is built on 44 islands and 55 canals at the end of the Baltic Sea.

The first photo shows its greatest prize - the Hermitage. It is one of the world's largest art musuems with just over 3 million pieces housed in the former sumptious, dripping with gold Winter Palace of Peter The Great (1672-1725). Peter's wife the "whole lot of woman" Catherine The Great started this art collection with 255 pieces in 1764. The Hermitage is absolutely grand and ornate. The whole thing is like having a Louvre inside Versailles or Prado inside Palacio. Paul and I spent 4 hours covering this beast. Apart from the actual rooms, furniture, sculptures there are paintings from all the grand masters of Europe. The Alexander Column in the first photo is the place where, on 7 November 1917, the Bolsheviks, lead by Lenin, seized power from the royals (Tsar Nicholas II) and started communist Russia (which fell in 1997). The second shows one of the rooms inside the Hermitage (Palace).

The other great site of the city is the Peter and Paul Fortress, which Peter The Great founded as the original city in 1703 (photo two). Peter then built the Peter and Paul Cathedral in 1733 (photo three) which now houses his grave, his wife's Catherine and most of the Russian royalty which spanned 1613 (Mikeil Romanov) to 1917 (Tsar Nicholas II). The other site of note is the Cathedral of Our Saviour On Spilled Blood (bottom photo), built in 1881 on the spot where Tsar Alexei II was murdered - hence the name. The amazing thing about this church is that the entire interior is covered in icons made entirely of mosaic glass - took 32 artists 12 years to complete. Other sites visted: 1858 St Issac's Cathedral with its impressive 260 step view and 100kg of gold on its dome, Our Lady of Kazan Cathedral containing the body of the General who defeated Napoleon in 1812 and the Dostoevsky House and Musuem.