Another symbol of the city is the Bronze Horseman monument., cast according to the design of the sculptor Etienne Falcone. The monument depicts Peter I on horseback. The head of the emperor is crowned with a laurel crown – a symbol of his glory and victories, and the hand of the king, pointing to the Neva, the Academy of Sciences and the Peter and Paul Fortress, symbolically denotes the main goals of his reign: education, trade and military power. The opening of the monument took place on August 7, 1782.
According to Healthknowing, there are about 56 parks, 166 gardens, 718 squares and 230 boulevards in St. Petersburg. The most famous parks are the Summer Garden and the Mikhailovsky Garden. Now they are part of the Russian Museum. Ensemble of the Summer Garden was created by order of Peter I, famous architects – Matveev, Zemtsov, Michetti and Leblon took part in the work. Under Peter, luxurious balls were held here, where all the high society of St. Petersburg gathered. In the 19th century, new pavilions appeared in the garden – “Coffee House” and “Tea House”, in front of the “Tea House” a monument to the fabulist Krylov was erected. In total, there are currently about 90 sculptures in the garden.
St. Petersburg can rightly be considered the cultural capital of Russia. There are more than 170 museums here, among which is one of the largest museums in the world – the Hermitage.
Russian Museum (former Mikhailovsky Palace) – the world’s largest collection of Russian fine art. The building was designed by the architect Rossi in the classical style, the museum itself was opened in 1898. There are over 400 thousand exhibits here, representing all stages of the development of Russian fine art from ancient icons to the avant-garde of the 20th century. Opposite the Russian Museum on Arts Square is one of the best monuments to A.S. Pushkin.
Among tourists, the first natural science museum in Russia, the Kunstkamera , is of particular interest.. Translated from German, this name means “cabinet of rarities”. Its building was founded in 1718. Initially, the Kunstkamera was conceived as a library and collection of monsters and rarities of Peter I. Based on the collection of the Kunstkamera in 1836, 7 museums were created in St. Petersburg. The Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography named after Peter the Great, formed on the basis of Peter the Great’s collections, is located in the Kunstkamera itself, and the top three floors of the Kunstkamera belong to the Lomonosov Museum, where personal belongings of the scientist, scientific instruments, geographical maps and astronomical instruments are kept. Now there are several permanent exhibitions dedicated to the ethnography of the peoples of America, Africa, China, Japan, Indonesia, Australia, Oceania and other countries, as well as the exhibition “Anatomical rarities of the St. Petersburg Kunstkamera”. You will see models of residential and religious buildings, traditional clothing of the population of various countries of the world, household utensils, tools, ceramics, art glass, metal products, including precious ones, musical instruments, religious objects and ritual attributes, traditional weapons. There is also a unique Gottorp planetarium globe, created in the 17th century in Germany. It was presented to Peter I during the Northern War and brought to St. Petersburg in 1717. The diameter of the globe is 3.1 meters.
St. Petersburg cannot be imagined without the famous cruiser “Aurora”, which stands at the Petrovskaya embankment. This is a real monument of domestic shipbuilding. It was built in 1897 and launched on May 11, 1900. The cruiser received its baptism of fire in 1905 in the Tsushima battle of the Russo-Japanese War. During the First World War, Aurora took an active part in the fighting in the Baltic Sea. In the revolutionary events of 1917, he also played an important role – it was with the shot of the Aurora that the assault on the Winter Palace began. In 1956, the Ship Museum was opened on the Aurora, where more than 500 authentic documents, photographs, ship items are presented, telling about the history of the Aurora cruiser and its participation in the fate of Russia,
30 km from the center of St. Petersburg is Peterhof – one of the most famous park ensembles in the world. Petrodvorets was conceived by Peter I as a grand country residence. There are hundreds of different fountains here. A special place among them is occupied by the Grand Cascade, which is a huge grotto, on the sides of which are richly decorated waterfall stairs. The symbol of the victory of the Russians over the Swedes is very interesting – the fountain “Samson” with a statue of a biblical hero tearing apart the mouth of a lion.
From St. Petersburg you can go to Tsarskoye Selo. This is a small town south of St. Petersburg. The most interesting here are the Catherine Palace and the park. The collection of the Catherine Palace includes many unique examples of decorative and applied art, furniture, porcelain, statues, paintings and personal items of Russian emperors and their families. One of the most famous interiors of the Catherine Palace is the Amber Room, the interiors of which were exactly recreated according to the model of the lost ones.
