Russia Trip Report, Day 7: Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg

Day 7, Thursday, August 2, 2012:

Took bus no 7 and were at the Dvortsovaya Ploshchad palace square by 8.30. On 1st Thursday of each month, entry to Hermitage museum is free. We planned to see the Treasure gallery—the two gold rooms (300 rubles) and the diamond room (300 rubles) -- which are of course ticketed and there is a fee for the camera as well (200 rubles).

 (If we had not chosen the free day visit, we would have bought tickets online for 2 days). 

The line started building up and by 9 was stretching till the other end ... we were right at the start ... it was a cold, windy day...13*C as opposed to the 31*C we had experienced on the day we landed at Petersburg. 

Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg:

As can be seen we were right at the palace entrance at the beginning of the queue. Sat on the platform and clicked the pic from that angle. Rested on the platform till the palace gates opened at 9.30. Can see the long line that had formed behind us...

Alexander Column:

The Alexander Column (Aleksandrovskaya colonna) that towers in the palace square was erected after the Russian victory in the war with Napoleon's France. 

Named after Emperor Alexander I, who ruled Russia between 1801 and 1825 (during the Napoleonic Wars), this monument — the tallest of its kind in the world — is 155 ft tall and is topped with a statue of an angel holding a cross.

 The column is a single piece of red granite, 83 ft tall and 11 ft 5 in diameter. The granite monolith was obtained from Finland and transported by sea on a barge specially designed. Without the aid of modern cranes and engineering machines, the column, weighing 661 tons-- 1,322,760 pounds -- was erected by 3,000 men in less than 2 hours. 

We marveled at the sight of this tall column which is set so neatly that no attachment to the base is needed.

At one end of the square is the bow-shaped Empire-style Building of the General Staff (1819–29), which centers on a double triumphal arch crowned with a Roman quadriga (chariot drawn by four horses).

The pedestal of the Alexander Column is decorated with symbols of military glory.

At the other end is bow-shaped Empire-style Building of the General Staff (1819–29), which centers on a double triumphal arch crowned with a Roman quadriga. (chariot drawn by four horses)

This is the palace facade...

This is the palace square after our day at the hermitage--costumed Russian model couple available for pics in the palace background

WINTER PALACE:

The Winter Palace dominates the south embankment of the Neva River . The first Imperial residence here was a wooden house in the Dutch style built in 1708 for Peter the Great and his family. This was replaced in 1711 by a stone building. Empress Anna Ioannovna created a new, larger palace on the site. Empress Elizabeth daughter of Peter the Great expanded the building.

The building forms a square with an interior courtyard . The facades feature two levels of columns, and the parapets are decorated with statues and vases. The palace is 22m high, and local planning regulations have prevented any building in the city centre rising higher than this ever since.

Alexander II was the last of the Tsars to genuinely use the Winter Palace as his main residence. After his assassination in 1881, it became clear that the palace was too large to be properly secured (the first attempt on his life the year before had been a bomb that damaged several rooms in the palace and killed 11 guards).

Alexander III and Nicholas II both set up their family residences at suburban palaces, the former at Gatchina and the latter at the Alexander Palace in Tsarskoye Selo (also known as Pushkin which we had visited earlier). The Winter Palace was only used for official ceremonies and receptions.

In 1905, the Winter Palace witnessed the Bloody Sunday Massacre on Palace Square, when thousands of striking workers came to meet the Tsar in peaceful protest and were fired dead by troops .

Although Nicholas II was not responsible it marked the beginning of the end for the Imperial family. In 1914 the Winter Palace was stripped of much of its wealth and transformed into a temporary hospital for wounded soldiers.

In 1917, after Nicholas II's abdication and the February Revolution, the Winter Palace became the seat of the Provisional Government 

The Bolshevik-led revolutionary forces stormed the palace in October . In the ensuing anarchy, a portion of the Winter Palace's riches were ransacked, including the enormous Imperial wine cellars (although the looting did not extend to the Hermitage).

The Winter Palace was declared part of the State Hermitage Museum on 17 October 1917

There was further extensive damage to the building during the Siege of Leningrad by the Germans in 1941 (WW II)

Restoration  returned the Imperial splendor . The State Rooms of the Winter Palace now form one of the most popular sections of the Hermitage.

So that’s the great history behind this three-story palace which is a marvel of Baroque architecture. It has 1,786 doors, 1,945 windows and 1,057 elegantly and lavishly decorated halls and rooms. 

MUSEUM:

The museum was founded in 1764 when Catherine the Great purchased a collection of 255 paintings from the German city of Berlin.

Today, the Hermitage boasts 3 million exhibits and displays a diverse range of art and artifacts from all over the world and from throughout history (from Ancient Egypt to the early 20th century Europe).

The Hermitage’s collections include works by Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael and Titian, a unique collection of Rembrandts and Rubens, many French Impressionist works by Renoir, Cezanne, Manet, Monet and Pissarro, numerous canvasses by Van Gogh, Matisse, Gaugin and several sculptures by Rodin.

If you were to spend a minute looking at each exhibit on display in the Hermitage, you would need 11 years before you’d seen them all.

The collection contains 2 970 214 items, including: 16 851 paintings, 622 172 graphic art, 12 623 sculptures, 738 389 archeological objects, 301 512 applied art, 1 132 627 numismatics, 146 040 other exhibit items

At 9.30, they opened the gate and we entered the Great Courtyard – here the queue was split into 2 – one on each side of the Winter Palace. So smart late comers rushed to the head of the 2nd line!! 

The palace doors opened at 10 and though it was a free day (first Thursday of the month), we had to go to the ticket counter—we bought tickets for the two gold rooms (300 rubles) and the diamond room (300 rubles) and for the camera (200 rubles) —12.45 and 3.30 were the timings for our English tours of the treasure galleries and we were told where to assemble for the tours. 

After depositing bags in the cloakroom, we ran to our preferred galleries in the 1st floor per our plan (to beat the crowd).

 Jordan Staircase:

The main staircase called the Jordan Staircase has two broad flights of marble steps leading up to a landing embellished with grey granite columns. It is adorned with statues, some of which were brought from Italy in Peter the Great's reign. The 18th-century ceiling painting in this staircase depicting Mount Olympus visually enlarges the interior that is transfused with light, gleaming gold and mirrors.

In the 18th century it was known as the Ambassadors' Staircase, later the Jordan Staircase, since the imperial family used it to descend to the Neva at Epiphany for the ceremony of the Blessing of Waters (in which the river symbolized the Jordan).

We loved the Pavilion Hall with its Peacock clock, furniture inlaid with semi precious stones and ancient Roman mosaic replicated on the floor. 

The Raphael Loggia (copies of Vatican fresco) is awesome. It reproduces the Vatican gallery in thirteen identical sections, each vault showing 4 scenes from the Bible. The only changes from the Vatican are replacing the heraldic spheres of the Medici with a medallion of Raphael and the coat of arms of Pope Leo X with the Russian eagle and Catherine's monogram.

Each piece in the Majolica room is great—such lovely detail. 

Silverware was awesome...

Nearby is the room displaying the huge"Tsarina of Vases", weighing 19.2 tonnes, which took over eleven years (1831-43) to complete as the jasper stone is hard but brittle.

Malachite room:

The malachite room (with pillars, fireplace, table, vase etc all in malachite and a delicate wall painting with figures representing Day, Night and Poetry) is an awesome sight...

This is the imperial library (total walnut paneling and shelves), 

Peter the Great (Small Throne) Room...

the stunning armorial hall with huge gold pillars

The St George (Large Throne) Hall (with its magnificent parquet floor made from 16 varieties of wood), 

the Gold Drawing-room (again with parquet floor) and solid gold panel walls

the brocade Boudoir, and the study with mahogany furniture (interior in the apartments of Empress Maria Alexandrovna, the wife of Alexander) stand out in our memory.

We managed to see lovely Sèvres porcelain collection, gilded silver craft pieces, ivory carvings on display along with Michael Angelo’s Crouching Boy and some paintings of the Italian masters on the 2nd floor, along with several awesome rooms.

 Music room here...

Ivory pieces...

 There are seats to rest in some of the galleries and the museum was such a feast for our aesthetic senses.

Tour of the treasure rooms:

In between, we ran down to the ground floor to join the tour of the treasure rooms—we were 5 minutes early for the diamond room tour and our guide came in a few minutes late with her private group of 6 people. We admired the Greek/roman statues in the Jupiter hall and the galleries nearby till our guide turned up. 






We got to see all these and much more. These pics are from official site, no private pics allowed (beauty of the gems has hardly come through in these pics):

After the tour we had some pastries and ice creams at the cafeteria and resumed our journey through the galleries. 

Gold rooms tour:

We could not find our way to the gold rooms by 3.30 and when we requested help, a Russian official in a suit personally took us to the gold rooms. Very kind of him to go out of his way to help us!! The elderly lady guide there was the best one could hope for and showed us the intricate details of the 1500 pieces displayed there. 



We lingered on for a good 10 minutes after our group had left for both the tours till a guard politely requested us to exit.

The halls became quite empty as the afternoon progressed and we almost had the whole place to ourselves. We scurried from one hall to another consulting our maps and managed to see all the state apartments. Antiquity section was mostly uncovered though and we missed the impressionism gallery as well. It is not a single direction route and is quite difficult to negotiate without missing some awesome hall just adjacent.

We had been one of the first to enter and were the very last to leave the beautiful palace museum. After collecting our bags from the cloakroom, we had our packed lunch at the palace ground and got out at 6.30 when the guards started closing the gate.

Church of Savior on Spilled Blood (Tserkov Spasitelya Na Krovi):

Took a bus and got down after Kanal Gribedovo and walked to the Church of Savior on Spilled Blood. As already mentioned, the road Nevsky prospect is cut by 3 rivers, Moskvi, Gribedovo and Fontanki and of course the huge Neva river runs in front of the winter palace. It is easy to link landmarks to these rivers,

Petersburg's most-photographed church, this cathedral is a mountain of bright, beveled domes topped by gold crosses. It was built between 1883 and 1907 on the site where Tsar Alexander II was assassinated in 1881, prompting residents to call it Church of Savior on Spilled Blood (Tserkov Spasitelya Na Krovi). The official name is Church of the Resurrection of Christ.

After assuming power in 1855 in the wake of Russia’s disastrous defeat in the Crimean war against Britain, France and Turkey, Alexander II initiated a number of reforms. In 1861 he freed the Russian serfs (peasants, who were enslaved to their owners) and undertook a rigorous program of military, judicial and urban reforms, never before attempted in Russia. However, during the second half of his reign Alexander II became unpopular—there were a series of attempts on his life, including an explosion in the Winter Palace and the derailment of a train.

He was finally assassinated in 1881 by a group of revolutionaries, who threw a bomb at his royal carriage... his son Alexander III had a church built at the same spot!! The cobblestone pavement where the king was killed has been fenced and red roses grow in the very spot facing the altar in this church. 

The church was closed for services in the 1930s, when the Bolsheviks went on an offensive against religion and destroyed churches all over the country. It was used as a warehouse for vegetables and even as a temporary mortuary for a while...It remained closed and under restoration for over 30 years and was finally re-opened in 1997 in all its dazzling former glory.

On that day, the cathedral was open till 8PM, ticket offices were open till 7 and that's how we were able to visit it after a full day at the hermitage. The church's interior is elaborately decorated with over 6000 sqm of mosaic and we plonked ourselves on the floor and gazed in awe at the awesome icons.

We came out after 8.30



Sat at the canal side for a while and then walked towards Nevsky prospect. Kazan cathedral is just opposite but my feet were protesting. So we hopped onto a bus and got down at Ploshchad Vosstaniya and marched on to our hotel Roses

We had an early Sapsan Train to catch the next day and this was our last day at Petersburg. 

We told ourselves we’ll get up around 10.30 pm when it becomes dark and go out and see the Neva bridges being raised… but no, weariness won and we slept on…

Our Russian vacation last day is at:
http://adventuretrav.blogspot.com/2016/12/russia-trip-report-day-8-novodevichy.html