The Rough Guide to St. Petersburg 6 (Rough Guide Travel Guides)

480 Pages·2008·17.6 MB·English

by  Rough Guides, Dan Richardson

THE ROUGH GUIDE to
St Petersburg
ROUGHGUIDES
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I SBN 978-1-85828-062-2
5 1 8 9 9
9 7 8 1 8 5 8 2 8 0 6 2 2
The Rough Guide to
St Petersburg
written and researched by
Dan Richardson
NEW YORK • LONDON • DELHI
www.roughguides.com
Contents
Colour section 1 H Shlisselburg, Valaam and
Kizhi .................................. 294
Introduction ............................... 4 I Novgorod .......................... 307
What to see................................ 7
When to go .............................. 10 Listings 321
Things not to miss ................... 12
J Accommodation ............... 323
Basics 17 K Eating and drinkin g ........... 337
L Clubs and live venues ....... 355
Getting there............................ 19 M The arts ............................ 362
Red tape and visas ................. 28 N Shopping ......................... 371
Health ...................................... 32 O Children’s St Petersbur g ... 379
Information .............................. 34 P Sports .............................. 382
Arrival ...................................... 35
City transport and tour s ........... 36 Contexts 389
The media ............................... 43
Holidays and festivals ............. 44 A history of St Petersbur g...... 391
Trouble and the police ............ 48 Books .................................... 418
Travel essentials ..................... 50
Language 425
The City 59
1 Within the Fontanka ............ 61 Travel store 443
2 The Hermitage .................. 115
3 The Russian Museum........ 137
4 Vasilevskiy Island .............. 151 Small print & Index 449
5 The Peter and Paul Fortress,
Petrograd Side and the An Imperial city colour
Kirov Islands .................... . 166 section following p.144
6 Liteyniy, Smolniy and
Vladimirskaya ........................ . 190
7 The Southern Suburbs ...... 213 The Soviet heritage
8 Vyborg Side ...................... 221 colour section following
p.272
Out of the City 231
9 The Imperial palace s ........ . 233 Colour maps section
G Kronstadt , the Gulf coast following p.464
and Vyborg....................... . 281
3
왗왗 The Griboedov Canal 왗 The Winter Palace
| CONTENTS |
Introduction to
St Petersburg
Where were you born?
St Petersburg.
Where did you go to school?
Petrograd.
Where do you live now?
Leningrad.
And where would you like to live?
St Petersburg.
t Petersburg, Petro grad, Lenin grad and
now, again, St Peters burg (in Russian,
Sankt Peterburg) – as this tongue-in-
Scheek catechism suggests, the cit y’s
succession of names mirrors Russia’s history.
Founded in 1703 as a “window on the West” by Peter the Great, St Petersburg
was for two centuries the capital of the Tsarist Em pire, synonymous with
hubris, excess and magnificence.
During World War I the city renounced its Germanic-sounding name and
became Petrograd, and as such was the cradle of the revolutions that overthrew
Tsarism and brought the Bolsheviks to power in 1917. Later, as Lenin grad, it
epitomized the Soviet Union’s heroic sacrifices in the war against Fascism,
withstanding almost nine hundred days of Nazi sie ge. Finally, in 1991 – the
year that the USSR collapsed – the change of name, back to St Petersburg,
was deeply symbolic, infuriating the wartime generation but delighting those
who pined for a pre-revolutionary golden age; a dream kept alive throughout
the years of Stalinist terror, w hen the poet Osip Mandelstam (who died in a
labour camp) wrote: “We shall meet again in Petersburg . . .”
4 St Petersburg’s sense of its own identit y owes much to its ori gins and the
interweaving of myth and reality throughout its history. Created by the will
| INTRODUCTION | WHAT TO SEE | WHEN TO GO
of an autocrat, on a barren river delta on the same latitude as the southern tip
of Greenland, the Imperial capital embodied Peter the Great’s rejection of Old
Russia – represented by the former capital, “Asiatic” Moscow – and his embrace
of Europe. The city’s architecture, administration and social life were all copied
or imported, the splendid buildings appearing alien to the indigenous forms and
out of place in t he surrounding countryside. Artificiality and self-conscious-
ness were present from the be ginning and this showpiece city of palaces and
canals soon decreed itself the arbiter
As the last tsar once remarked,
of Russia’s sensibility and imagination.
“St Petersburg is Russian
Petersburgers still tend to look down
– but it is not Russia.”
on the earthier Muscovites, who regard
them in turn as snobbish. As the last tsar,
Nicholas II, once remarked, “Remem-
ber, St Petersburg is Russian – but it is
not Russia.”
For all that, the city is associated
with a host of renowned figures from
Russian culture and history. It was
here that Tchaikovsky, Stravinsky and
Shostakovich composed; Pushkin,
Dostoyevsky and Gogol wrote their
masterpieces; Mendeleyev and Pavlov 5
made their contri butions to science;
| INTRODUCTION | WHAT TO SEE | WHEN TO GO
왔 A “Red Granny”
왖 Street life off Nevskiy prospekt
“Walruses” and ice-fishing
Russians are proud of their “walruses” (morzhi) – intrepid bathers who
break holes in the ice to swim in rivers throughout the winter. You can see
them on the Neva bank of the Peter and Paul Fortress any day, joined
by less hardy swimmers once the water warms up. This rugged tradition
has spawned some great Olympic champions. Another quintessentially
Russian sport is ice-fishing on frozen rivers, lakes or seas. Every year,
hundreds of fishermen have to be rescued from ice floes on the Gulf of
Finland or the Sea of Okhotsk. Many are equipped only with an ice-drill
and rod, a stool and plastic tent – and, of course, vodka.
and Rasputin, Lenin and Trotsky made history. So, too, are various buildings
and sites inseparable from their former occupants or visitors: the amazing
Imperial palaces outsi de St Peters burg, where Peter an d Cat herine t he Great
led the field in exuberant living; the Yusu pov Palace, where Ras putin was
murdered; Finland Station, where Lenin returned from exile; and the Winter
Palace, the storming of which was heralded by the guns of the cruiser Aurora,
now moore d along the embankment from the Peter and Paul Fortress – itself
a Tsarist prison to generations of revolutionaries.
Today, “Piter” (as it’s afectionate ly known) casts itself as Russia’s cu l-
tural capital. For its three hundredth anniversary in 2003, much of the centre
underwent a facelift when President Putin (a Leningrader by birth) hosted a
G8 summit. While the city has never looked finer or been so tourist-friendly
as now, homelessness, alcoholism and poverty are still visi ble remin ders of
the human cost of Russia’s embrace of capitalism. Yet the city has endured
6 far worse in its history, and there are plenty who are doing well or anticipate
a brighter future .
| INTRODUCTION | WHAT TO SEE | WHEN TO GO
What to see
t Petersburg is Russia’s second largest city, with a population of five
million and an urban s prawl of over 1400 square kilometres, across
islands and peninsulas delineated by the River Neva and its tributar-
Sies. The metro covers most parts of the city of interest to visitors, but
the historic centre is best explored on foot – easily done with a decent map,
given the abundance of landmarks.
St Petersburg’s major islands and “mainland” districts are juxtaposed in the
magnificent panorama of the Neva Basin. On the south bank of the Neva, the
golden dome of St Isaac’s Cathedral and the needle-spire of the A dmiralty
loom above the area within the Fontanka (Chapter 1), whose vibrant main
axis, Nevskiy prospekt, runs past a slew of sights cu lminating in the Winter
Palace. The seductive vistas along the Moyka and Griboedov waterways entice
you to wander of in search of the Mariinskiy ballet, the spot where Rasputin
was murdered, or the setting for Crime and Punishment.
Two museums here rate a c hapter each. The Hermitage (Chapter 2 ) boasts
superlative collections of Rembrandt, Spanish masters, French Impressionists
and Post-Im pressionists; treasures from Si beria, Centra l Asia, In dia, Persia an d
China – plus t he sumptuous state rooms of the Winter Pa lace, which forms
part of the complex. If homegrown art is lacking there, that’s because it’s in
the Russian Museum (Chapter 3), which runs the gamut from folk art an d
icons to Futurism and Socialist Realism.
7
| INTRODUCTION | WHAT TO SEE | WHEN TO GO
왔 Queuing for food is a thing of the past – but prices are a worry for man y
Opposite the Admiralty, on the spit or Strelka of Vasilevskiy Island (Chap-
ter 4), the Rostral Columns and Naval Museum proclaim a maritime heritage
bequeathed by Peter t he Great. Near by is t he Kunstkammer of anatomical
curios founded by Peter as Russia’s first museum and still the city’s most
ghoulish tourist attraction. Farther alon g the embankment stand the Academ y
of Arts and the palace of Prince Menshikov.
Completing the panorama is the Peter and Paul Fortress (Chapter 4), its
bastions surrounding a soaring cathedral where the Romanov monarchs are
buried, and a Prison Museum attesting to the dark side of its history. Beyond
its moat, the city’s zoo and mosque mark the onset of the residential Petro-
grad Side, with its Art Nouveau buildings and flat-museums commemorating
the opera singer Chaliapin and the Bolshevik “martyr” Kirov, w hose name
was given to the archipelago that forms its hinterland. The Kirov Islands
are the city’s summer playground, with boatin g lakes, the Zenit Stadium and
Yelagin Palace to ex plore.
Back on the “mainland”, the area beyond the Fontanka is designated Lit-
eyniy, Smolniy and Vladimirska ya (Chapter 6 ), after the three localities
that define its character. Its finest
sights are the Smolniy Cathedral,
St Petersburg’s beauty is tinged
near the Institute from where
with melancholy.
the Bolsheviks orchestrated the
October Revolution, and the
Alexander Nevsky Monastery,
in whose cemeteries many of the
city’s most famous personages are
buried. However, don’t neglect
the atmospheric V ladimirskaya
district, where Dostoyevsky’s
apartment and the Pushkinskaya
10 artists’ colony are located,
along with an assortment of odd
museums.
Further out, t he in dustrial
Southern Suburbs (Chapter
7) are dignified b y grandiose
Soviet architecture such as t he
House of Soviets and the Victory
Monument, and Tsarist trium-
phal arches that were re-erected
in the euphoria of the Soviet
8 Union’s victory over Nazi Ge r-
many. Aside from t hese, t here’s
왖 Sailors on the Strelka
| INTRODUCTION | T TO SEE | WHEN TO GO