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Walking routes in Saint Petersburg

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      Palace Square, the Winter Palace and Kazan Cathedral

      ⏱ 1 h 10 min🚶 1.4 km🍽 1📍 4 stops
      🐢 A little — under 3 km

      The Alexander Column, the facade of the Winter Palace, coffee in the Singer House and the colonnade of Kazan Cathedral. The essential Petersburg for a first visit.

      🏛 History and architecture🎨 Art⏱ An hour or so
      🗺 Open in Yandex Maps
      1. 1
        🏛 Palace Square
        The city's main square between the Winter Palace and the arc of the General Staff Building with the Triumphal Arch.
        The Alexander Column
        📖 More about the placeCollapse
        Palace Square
        © Mikhey77777 · CC BY-SA 4.0
        • From 1918 to 1944 the square was called Uritsky Square, after the head of the Petrograd Cheka, killed by the General Staff Building.
        • On 16 June 1766 Catherine II held a Carousel here — an equestrian festival-tournament with Rinaldi's wooden amphitheater seating several thousand.
        • The granite monolith of the Alexander Column is not fixed in any way and stays on its pedestal under its own weight alone.
        • In 1924 it was decided to replace the angel on the column with a figure of Lenin, but after a year of discussion the project was dropped.
        • The east side of the square is closed off by the Guards Corps headquarters, built by Alexander Bryullov in 1837–1843.
        • In 1932 the square's cobblestones were paved over with asphalt, and the diabase-cobble paving was restored only in 1977.
        • In autumn 1941 they seriously discussed making an airfield for fighters on the square by moving the column, but dropped the idea.
      2. 🚶 on foot
      3. 2
        🖼 State Hermitage (Winter Palace)
        Дворцовая пл., 2
        🎟 ticket · free for concession holders on the third Thursday of the month
        Rastrelli's turquoise-and-white palace on the Neva — the tsars' main residence, now one of the largest museums in the world.
        We look at the Winter Palace from outside; the Jordan Staircase, the “Peacock” and Rembrandt are separate and take another 3 hours.
        📖 More about the placeCollapse
        State Hermitage (Winter Palace)
        © Никонико962 · CC BY-SA 4.0
        State Hermitage (Winter Palace)
        © Ludvig14 · CC BY-SA 4.0
        • The Hermitage dates from 1764, when 317 paintings of the merchant Gotzkowsky were handed to Catherine II from Berlin in settlement of a debt.
        • The present Winter Palace is the fifth one: built in 1754–1762, it became the tallest residential building in St Petersburg and had about 1,500 rooms.
        • The fire of 1837 destroyed all the palace's interiors, but under Stasov and Bryullov it was restored in just two years.
        • The Jordan Entrance is named after the "Jordan" ice hole: at Epiphany the royal family went out through it onto the ice of the Neva.
        • On 5 February 1880 the Narodnaya Volya member Stepan Khalturin set off a bomb in the palace, aiming at Alexander II: 11 guard soldiers died, the emperor was unharmed.
        • From October 1915 to November 1917 a hospital named for Tsarevich Alexei operated in the Winter Palace's state rooms.
        • The Hermitage collection was evacuated during the war, and not a single exhibit was lost.
      4. 🚶 on foot
      5. 3
        ☕️ Singer House and Café René
        Невский пр., 28
        ▮▮▮▯▯
        Coffee or lunch with a view of Kazan Cathedral
        🍴 A Russian-French café, René, on the 2nd floor of the House of Books (Singer House) from the Aster team, with windows onto Kazan Cathedral, breakfasts in the morning and a pastry counter. What to order: vareniki, gratin with Gruyère, onion soup, pyshki or a croissant with coffee.
      6. 🚶 on foot
      7. 4
        🏛 Kazan Cathedral
        Казанская пл., 2
        Voronikhin's huge cathedral of grey Pudost stone, with a semicircle of 96 columns on Nevsky Prospekt.
        The colonnade and Kutuzov
        📖 More about the placeCollapse
        Kazan Cathedral
        © Flamel123 · CC BY-SA 4.0
        • The architect Andrey Voronikhin was a former serf of Count Stroganov, who freed him and sent him to study in Paris and Geneva.
        • In 1813 Field Marshal Mikhail Kutuzov was buried in the cathedral's left side chapel.
        • After 1812 trophies were brought to the cathedral: French banners, keys of captured cities and Marshal Davout's baton.
        • In 1834–1836 the iconostasis was clad in silver that Platov's Cossacks had taken from the French; it was melted down in 1922.
        • The monuments to Kutuzov and Barclay de Tolly by Boris Orlovsky were unveiled in 1837, on the 25th anniversary of the victory over Napoleon.
        • From 1932 it housed the Museum of the History of Religion and Atheism, and the first service after the break was held on 4 November 1990.
        • In 1893 the funeral service for Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky was held in the cathedral.

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