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Walking routes in Saint Petersburg

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      Yelagin Island at sunset

      ⏱ 3 h 30 min🚶 5 km🍽 1📍 4 stops
      🚶 Moderate — 3–7 km

      Through quiet evening Yelagin to the Strelka, where the sun sets right into the bay, and then the lights of the WHSD and Lakhta come on. Dinner at a French bistro by the bridge.

      🌙 Evening🏛 History and architecture🌳 Parks and nature
      🗺 Open in Yandex Maps
      1. 1
        🖼 Yelagin Palace
        Елагин остров, 1
        🎟 ticket
        Rossi's white-and-yellow Empire palace with a semicircular facade on Yelagin Island.
        From Krestovsky Ostrov metro over the 2nd Yelagin Bridge — 15 minutes. We look at the palace from outside; the park is open until 23:00, on weekends until 20:00 entry is paid
        📖 More about the placeCollapse
        Yelagin Palace
        © Florstein · CC BY-SA 4.0
        Yelagin Palace
        © Ludvig14 · CC BY-SA 4.0
        Yelagin Palace
        © Александровы АГ · CC BY-SA 4.0
        • The first house for Ivan Yelagin, in the Palladian style, was built by an unknown architect — Quarenghi is suspected.
        • Alexander I bought the island for his mother Maria Feodorovna and in 1818 commissioned Carlo Rossi to rebuild it.
        • The palace was nicknamed the “palace of doors”: twenty-odd carved and gilded doors, and none repeats.
        • The white stucco in one of the rooms looks so much like porcelain that the room was named the Porcelain Cabinet.
        • In the early 20th century the palace served as a retreat for prime ministers — Witte and Stolypin stayed here.
        • In the war a shell hit a chimney and started a fire; by 1960 the interiors were restored from the surviving fragments.
        • Since 1987 the palace has housed the Museum of Russian Decorative and Applied Art and Interiors.
      2. 🚶 on foot
      3. 2
        🌳 Yelagin Island (Central Park of Culture and Rest)
        🎟 partly ticketed · Free entry on weekdays; ticketed on weekends and holidays
        Boats, squirrels, bicycles
        Go west along the central avenues past the ponds — almost no one here in the evening
        📖 More about the placeCollapse
        Yelagin Island (Central Park of Culture and Rest)
        © Florstein · CC BY-SA 4.0
        Yelagin Island (Central Park of Culture and Rest)
        © Екатерина Борисова · CC BY-SA 4.0
        Yelagin Island (Central Park of Culture and Rest)
        © Александр Байдуков · CC BY-SA 4.0
        • The island's Finnish name is Mistulansaari, its old Russian one Mishin Island.
        • Peter I gave the island to Shafirov in 1709, and the name stuck to Ivan Yelagin, who owned it from 1777.
        • In 1817 the island was bought for the treasury for 350,000 rubles for the Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna.
        • The island's nine ponds cover 20 ha — a fifth of its area.
        • From 1700 to 1878 the island was flooded 134 times.
        • The Central Park of Culture and Rest opened in 1932, and was given Kirov's name in 1934.
      4. 🚶 on foot
      5. 3
        🌅 Yelagin Island Spit
        🎟 partly ticketed · On weekdays entry to the island is free, on weekends it is ticketed
        The best sunsets over the gulf
        Be here 20 minutes before sunset. In late autumn and winter the sun sets around 16:00–17:00 — then come at dusk, for the lights of the WHSD and Lakhta Center
        📖 More about the placeCollapse
        Yelagin Island Spit
        © Germash19 · CC BY-SA 4.0
        Yelagin Island Spit
        © Purpleabyss · CC BY-SA 4.0
        • The terrace on the western cape with a light pink granite parapet was built in the 1920s to a design by L. A. Ilyin.
        • The stone lions on the parapet were moved from the Stroganov dacha.
        • During the Crimean War an artillery battery stood on the spit.
        • The cape is man-made — one of the highest parts of the island, yet it rises only a little over 3 metres above the sea.
      6. 🚶 on foot
      7. 4
        🍽 Marseillaise Restaurant
        наб. Мартынова, 16
        ▮▮▮▯▯
        Back along the south shore to the 2nd Yelagin Bridge — 25 minutes. On weekdays the bistro is open until 22:00, on Friday and weekends until 23:00
        🍴 A French restaurant-bakery on Krestovsky Island, across the Srednyaya Nevka from Yelagin. What to order: onion soup, beef cheeks, a bun with custard cream.

      ↩️ Getting back: From the restaurant to Krestovsky Ostrov metro — 7 minutes on foot along Morskoy Prospekt.

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