The palace is mostly famous for the Amber room which is totally made of amber. This palace is also a memorial to the heroic Soviet restorers as it was terribly looted by the Nazi in the years of the World War II and then recreated from ruins. You see that in the hard and poor post-war years Soviet people first took care of saving and preserving the past and culture and material life and comfort was not this important for them!
Catherine’s Palace and garden
Huge size of the cathedral makes it a bit heavy from the outside though inside it is light and full of harmony. It is like an island of Italian Renaissance in St. Petersburg because the cathedral has a lot in common with St. Pete’s in Rome.more»
St. Petersburg St. Isaac’s cathedral
It is something really unusual in the image of classical St. Petersburg because this church leads us to the traditions of ancient Russian art. The whole interior of the church is covered with mosaics assembled of little pieces of stained glass: tremendous work of Russian masters of the very beginning of the 20th century who created a real medieval Russian fairytale with their own hands.more»
St. Petersburg Church of Our Savior on the Spilled Blood
This is one of my favorite places though it is not as famous as the Hermitage. But if you go to Russia you should get acquainted with the Russian painting, it deserves your attention! It is not world famous though one can enjoy it more than the Italian or the famous French. Probably because more»it has sometimes more soul. It was very typical for Russian philosophers of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries to “seek for the truth” and this painful search is fully perceived in the Russian painting of that period. Here you will get a feeling of what is called mysterious Slavonic soul.
Usually this charming suburb with palaces and fountains is compared with Versailles though they are not the same. The most impressive attraction of Peterhof is definitely its garden. Peterhof in summer is the place where joy of life is concentrated like nowhere else. Its founder Peter the Great wanted to create “a paradise”, paradise for the human, not on the heaven but here and now. Peterhof revealed that simple childish joy of life was close to the heart of serious and sometimes cruel tsars…more»Here they would turn into kids again playing with fountains and grottos and feeding swans. Visit this place and have your child’s feeling of life returned to you. You can save your time using a hydrofoil to get to Peterhof from the very downtown of St. Petersburg, by hydrofoil it is only 35 minutes.
Peterhof Samson Fountain and Palace
This is a historical heart of St. Petersburg, the oldest structure which dates back to the times of foundation of the city. Inside the complex you feel yourself back to the early XVIIIth century as even the pavement there has been preserved since the tsars’ times. The bell of the Peter-and-Paul cathedral still plays the ancient melody “God save the tsar” and the members of the most famous Russian dynasty – the Romanovs – are buried under its vaults.more»
St. Petersburg Peter-and-Paul fortress
