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Places to see in Saint Petersburg

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      🏛 Sphinxes by the Academy of Arts

      Университетская наб., 17

      A pair of granite Egyptian sphinxes on the steps down to the Neva by the Academy of Arts.

      Sphinxes by the Academy of Arts
      © Alex Fedorov (Florstein) · CC BY-SA 4.0
      Sphinxes by the Academy of Arts
      © GAlexandrova · CC BY-SA 4.0
      • The sphinxes were made under the pharaoh Amenhotep III for his mortuary temple in Thebes; in 1825 they were found by the antiquities hunter Giovanni d'Athanasi.
      • Each sphinx, of pink Aswan granite, weighs 23 tonnes and is 5.24 m long.
      • Buying them was proposed by the traveller Andrey Muravyov, who had seen a sphinx in Alexandria in 1830.
      • The sphinxes had already been sold to France, but the July Revolution wrecked the deal — and Russia bought them for 64,000 rubles.
      • While being loaded onto the ship ‘Buena Esperanza’, one sphinx fell and damaged the headcloth.
      • The sphinxes arrived in May 1832, but for two years stood in the courtyard of the Academy of Arts while Konstantin Thon finished the landing stage.

      Part of these routes

      • Vasilyevsky Spit: Kunstkamera and sphinxes
      • Vasilyevsky’s Lines and Erarta
      • Neva embankments: from Smolny to the Strelka
      • Two banks of the Neva: from Petrogradka to Kolomna
      • All of Vasilyevsky: from the Strelka to the bay
      • A big walking day along the Neva
      • Art day: Impressionists, sphinxes and Erarta
      • Vasilyevsky Island gardens for toddlers
      • The Strelka and Vasilyevsky: a big day with kids
      • Vasilyevsky at dusk: the Strelka, sphinxes, the Lines
      • Vasilyevsky Strelka: the Rostral Columns at night
      • Palace Bridge, the Spit and the Sphinxes
      • The Sphinxes, Krasin and the Gulf of Finland
      • The General Staff, the Sphinxes and the Academy of Arts
      • The Sphinxes, Rumyantsev Garden and St Andrew's Cathedral

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