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Walking routes in Saint Petersburg

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      The Sphinxes, Krasin and the Gulf of Finland

      ⏱ 1 h 30 min🚶 4.5 km🍽 0📍 3 stops
      🚶 Moderate — 3–7 km

      From the Egyptian sphinxes along the Neva to the icebreaker Krasin and on to the embankment by the Sea Passenger Terminal, where the gulf begins. Wind, ships and open space.

      🏛 History and architecture🌳 Parks and nature⏱ An hour or so
      🗺 Open in Yandex Maps
      1. 1
        🏛 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.
        The sphinxes
        📖 More about the placeCollapse
        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.
      2. 🚶 on foot
      3. 2
        🖼 Icebreaker Krasin
        наб. Лейтенанта Шмидта, у 23-й линии
        🎟 ticket
        You can go down into the engine room
        The icebreaker at the quay
        📖 More about the placeCollapse
        Icebreaker Krasin
        © Александровы АГ · CC BY-SA 4.0
        Icebreaker Krasin
        © Александровы АГ · CC BY-SA 4.0
        • The icebreaker was built in 1916–1917 in Newcastle, England, at the Armstrong Whitworth yard, under the name ‘Svyatogor’.
        • The design was an improved version of Makarov's ‘Yermak’, with engines of 10,000 horsepower.
        • The engineer and future writer Yevgeny Zamyatin took part in assembling the ship in England.
        • In 1918 the icebreaker was sunk in the Northern Dvina to block the interventionists, but in 1920 they took it away to Britain.
        • In 1927 the icebreaker was named after Leonid Krasin, the diplomat who secured the ship's purchase back from England.
        • In the war the Krasin passed through the Panama Canal and went to the Arctic as part of the northern convoy PQ-15.
        • In the film “The Red Tent” (1969) the Krasin was played by another icebreaker, the ‘Sibiryakov’.
      4. 🚶 on foot
      5. 3
        🌅 Embankment by the Sea Passenger Terminal
        пл. Морской Славы, 1
        The open Gulf of Finland
        The Gulf of Finland
        📖 More about the placeCollapse
        Embankment by the Sea Passenger Terminal
        © Алексей Решетников · CC BY 3.0
        Embankment by the Sea Passenger Terminal
        © Dulamas · CC BY-SA 4.0
        • The Soviet Modernist building was built in 1973–1983 to a design by Vitaly Sokhin and his colleagues.
        • The walls are clad with panels shaped like sails, and the 78-metre spire carries a little ship.
        • Sokhin travelled round the ports of Europe and concluded that “nowhere in the world are sea terminals built” — the building type had to be invented.
        • The sails were criticised as expensive decoration, but the authors defended them, making them light, with an aluminium coating.

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      Data: © OpenStreetMap · DB-IP · weather — Open-Meteo
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