Day 3 in St Petersburg

Today was our third full day in St Petersburg, the weather continues to be good.  We have done lots of walking in this city, so this morning, we decided to take a local bus, a trolleybus. The public transport is not only very cheap $1 a ride, but also runs very frequently.

We had planned a full day of activities for today. Our first visit was to the Peter and Paul fortress was the first structure to be built in St. Petersburg, and thus the birthplace of the city. Peter the Great, captured this area from the Swedes. It never served its intended defensive function. Nevertheless it has had a rich, hugely varied, and sometimes sinister history as a military base, a home of government departments, the burial ground of the Russian Imperial family, and a forbidding jail that held some of Russia\’s most prominent political prisoners.

We visited one of the central attraction in this fortress, which is undoubtedly the Ss. Peter and Paul Cathedral, and one of St. Petersburg\’s most striking buildings, we also visited the Trubetskoy Bastion or prison.  Many famous political dissidents-both pre and post revolution time- were held here. The cathedral is extremely ornate inside and all its walls and ceilings are covered in mosaics.  Members of the royal family- including Peter the Great and Catherine the Great- as well as some of the murdered Romanovs family who were buried there more recently, are in this church.

Our second visit for the day was to the Summer Garden.  To get to this place we walked through the  Mars Field. The summer gardens were built under the reign of Peter the Great in the early 1700’s, he also had a small summer palace built next to these gardens.  We walked outside this small palace, but did not go in as the next English group was not for another 2 hours.  Instead we enjoyed walking around the magnificent gardens and had a stop at a cafeteria within these gardens. 

Following our visit to the summer gardens, we headed towards the magnificent Church of the Saviour on the Spilled Blood.   The church’s official name is Church of the Resurrection of Christ, its colloquial name references the assassination attempt on Tsar Alexander II in 1881.

This church was not used for many years after the 1917 revolution, and after many years of the building being neglected a reconstruction started in 1970. It was opened in the early 1990s as a museum.  Both the interior and there exterior of the church are decorated with mosaic tiles.

We then walked to see another great cathedral, this time the St Issac’s Cathedral with is distinctive golden dome.  Whilst we decided not to go inside the church, we instead took the challenge to climb the 262 steps to the church’s dome.  The views from there of the whole city are incredible.

Afterwards we walked through the Alexander garden and saw the bronze horseman statue of Peter the Great. This garden is a place not only visited by tourists, by also in large numbers by the locals.  Today we also saw a flower exhibit in this park.

We managed to do – what it felt to me like – another half marathon, so we took the bus back to our neighbourhood.

For dinner we decided to eat at an Italian restaurant close to our hotel, a great choice indeed.

Please see more photos of today’s journey  here

Another great day in Russia.