At first glance St.Petersburg strikes you with its serene beauty. If you are a visitor to the city, don't hope for the hugging welcome you might receive in other cities. The reception will be utterly patrician, polite but unemotional.   Visitors arriving from Moscow walk right into the city's central street - Nevsky Prospekt, or, to be more exact, Ploshchad Vosstaniya, the intersection of Ligovsky and Nevsky Prospekts. Over the years Nevsky Prospekt has become the city's pride and gem. In 1709 a road was cut through in the section of the Prospekt from the Admiralty to Ploshchad Vosstaniya. Simultaneously, monks of Alexander Nevsky Laura also laid a passage from the Laura to Ploshchad Vosstaniya. The roads crossed at an angle thereby forming the city's central street, which in 1738 was renamed into "Nevsky Pershpektiva" and in 1783 - into Nevsky Prospekt. The section from Ploshchad Vosstaniya to the Admiralty is absolutely straight with magnificent closely-built buildings on both sides. The first river you come across on your way to the Admiralty is Fontanka. . It got such a name (" a fountain river") because it supplied water to the fountains of Letny Sad, or Summer Gardens. Fontanka's pride is Anichkov Bridge, an impressive structure decorated with P.Klodt's sculptures unfolding the successive stages of the taming of horse by man. According to legend, when the first of the sculptures was set in place Emperor Nicholas I told Klodt that "he made horses better than a stallion". Across the bridge and further on along Nevsky Prospekt you can see one the city's most beautiful architectural ensembles with Alexandrinsky Theatre as a centerpiece. The Theatre, built by Rossi, boasts Apollo's chariot and opened on September 12th, 1832. It was named after Nicholas I's wife, Alexandra Fedorovna. Russia's 19th century author, Nikolai Gogol, wrote about the Theatre: "If you drop in at Alexandrinsky Theatre's entrance hall on a fresh frosty morning, you'll find it fascinating to watch the persistence with which theatre goers storm the box-office window trying to catch hold of a ticket". Next to the Theatre is another structure built on Rossi's project - the Public Library, one of the world's biggest. Statues of ancient scholars and poets can be seen between its columns. Soon after the Theatre and the Library were built a park was laid out in front of the Theatre with a statue of Catherine II in the center. At the foot of the empress are military commanders, statesmen and courtiers. Among them are such glorious personalities as Commanders G.Potemkin and A.Suvorov, poet G.Derzhavin and Duchess Y.Dashkova, who headed the Academy of Sciences and the Russian Academy. As you leave the park you can cross over to the other side of Nevsky Prospekt and walk on a bit farther. Then turn right to Mikhailovskaya Street and go as far as Ploshchad Isskustv, or Arts Square, another of Rossi's masterpieces. Mikhailovsky Palace, built in 1826 on order from Alexander I for his brother Mikhail Pvalovich, was turned into a museum of Russian art in the late 19th century and is currently known throughout the world as the Russian Museum. The Museum's collection comprises artifacts dating as far back as 11th century but the most precious of them is a collection of 18th - 20th century paintings. Along with Mikhailovsky Palace the Russian Museum owns L.Benois's quarters, Mikhailovsky Castle, Stroganov and Mramorny Palaces. The statue of the Russian poet Alexander Pushkin by sculptor M.Anikushin is right in front of the Museum. It was built in 1957 and the sculptor portrayed Pushkin reciting verse. Back on Nevsky Prospekt we go a bit down. Soon we'll see the Griboedov Canal. Petersburg, as we know, was built on marshes and one of the marshes was the source of two rivers - Mya and Krivusha. The Griboedov Canal is nothing but Krivusha, which in the second half of the 18th century was made into a canal. At first the canal was known as Yekaterininsky Canal, or the Canal of Catherine II. Later on, after the October Revolution, it was renamed into the Griboedov Canal.   On the other side of the Canal, if you turn right, you'll see one more of the city's landmarks - the Cathedral of Resurrection, or, as it is often called, Saviour-on-Blood, since it was built on the very spot Tzar Alexander II was mortally wounded on March 1st, 1881. The Cathedral of Saviour-on-Blood is reminiscent of Moscow's St.Bazil's Cathedral, which is what the authors of it had in mind. It was under construction from 1883 to 1907 and according to one of the legends the church is cloaked in, it has an icon that bears significant dates in the Russian history, such as 1917 (the year of the October Revolution), 1941 (the year the Great Patriotic War began), 1953 (the year Stalin died). They say there is one more date on the icon but no one can make out which. On the opposite side, facing Saviour-on-Blood is the famous Kazansky Cathedral, one of the most amazing pieces of Russian architecture. The Cathedral was built in 1801-1811 and from above has the form of a stretched cross. Facing Nevsky with its lateral facade it gives the impression that this is the main entrance. The architect, A.Voronikhin, faced a difficult dilemma - he had to follow the religious canons (by placing the entrance in the west) and at the same time fit it in with the general view of Nevsky Prospekt. He covered the Nevsky wing of the cathedral with colonnades but because of the 1812 war had no chance to replicate the colonnades on the opposite side. The closest prototype to the cathedral is St.Peter's Cathedral in Rome. From inside the Kazansky Cathedral is shaped like a Roman basilica, four rows of granite columns forming three corridors. Its exterior and interior design abounds in sculptures. If you proceed further towards the Admiralty you'll have to cross the Moika River via a cast-iron bridge, which has been renamed several times and is now known as Politseisky. The bridge got the name long ago but in the years following the Revolution was known for some time as Narodny. Once on the opposite side we find ourselves on Admiralty Island. And here is the Admiralty at last, the gilded spire of which can be seen from Ploshchad Vosstaniya, the start of our journey. Many of St.Petersburg's landmarks are on Nevsky Prospekt. But the Admiralty can well be considered the symbol of the city. The original Admiralty was laid by Peter I in 1704. In 1732-1738 it was rebuilt and in 1806 underwent one more reconstruction, this time by Adrian Zakharov. From above the structure is laid out as two "П", one inside the other. The Admiralty boasts plentiful reliefs and statues. In the days of the Great Patriotic War its spire was covered with a special case to conceal it from German pilots. The case was removed in 1945 and the gilded "Admiralty needle", as Pushkin called the spire, with its weather-vane korablik - "a little ship"- on top, cuts through the low skies of St.Petersburg and shines brightly in any weather...

The material comes from the following sources:  "San Petersburgo" ("Saint-Petersburg"), album; "Aurora", St. Petersburg, 1994.

Copyright © 2003 The Voice of Russia