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Just to prove that St. Petersburg is the art capital of the world, these pictures are from a live art installation at the Peter and Paul Fortress. These were captured by Laurichka. Such a shame she has just left St. Petersburg because her photos are really cool. I blogged in an earlier Copydude that the Fortress has [...] Faithful commenter, Aleks, reminded me about St. Petersburg’s Kresti Prison. This dovetails neatly with an earlier post about Anna Akhmatova. The Kresti is one of Russia’s oldest prisons and it’s where Anna’s first husband and son Lev spent quite some uncomfortable time. In this video you can see it on the opposite bank from the Sphinx. [...]
Unmissable among St. Petersburg’s 300 odd bridges is the Anichkov bridge, which crosses the Fontanka on Nevsky. In fact it was a fairly ordinary bridge until, in 1851, Nicholas 1 installed its series of four bronze sculptures, ‘The Horse Tamer’. The sculptures were the work of an arty Baltic German, the Baron Peter Klodt von Urgensburg, (no [...] Ciniselli in St. Petersburg is where Russian Circus came of age and developed into art form. The extra was extravaganza: waterfalls, fireworks and as many as 150 horses would make the show. Tango dancers, actors and wrestlers were drafted in alongside the traditional lions and clowns. Alexandre Benois remembers: ‘Trained horses were a speciality [...] The Fountain House is listed as a museum but it’s really a piece of theatre. Anna Akhmatova’s apartment housed a never-ending domestic drama. It began in 1918 with an unsuccessful marriage to an Orientalist. She moved in again as live-in mistress to Nikolai Punin, whose actual wife and mother-in-law stubbornly remained in the house during their [...] St Petersburg has several museums devoted to the Siege of Leningrad. Probably the most evocative is the cemetery at Piskariyovskoye. The only tombstone is a concrete arch, yet beneath your feet lie buried half the city’s population. With more than 6,000 people dying each day, there were neither the means nor the able-bodied capable of [...] Backpacking Swedish photographer, Anders Thorsell, has another 1,782 pictures just like this one. He clicked around Eastern Europe in the 1980s and his gallery is called ‘Soviet Stuff’. Anders’ picture book has everything – war memorials, rusty Ladas, toothless old women, leaden skies . . . . all the things that make Russia such a fun [...] Bob Atchison’s history sites are well worth a click. Especially if you like to go, ‘hmmm I never knew that’. ‘St Petersburg In 1900‘ turns up a lot of trivia, in particular about St Peterburg’s most misunderstood church. It might look 16th century but it was brand spanking new back in 1900. At the time, locals found [...] This week’s postcard, from the National Library, depicts St Petersburg at the turn of the century. Tram buffs will spot this instantly, since it shows both horse-drawn trams – konkas – and an electric tram. The new trams were fiecely resisted by konka drivers, resulting in a period of Tram Wars. The new entrepreneurs circumvented [...] |
    
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