Russian Museum and the Savior's mosaics for schoolkids

⏱ 4 h🚶 1.3 km🍽 1📍 4 stops

🐢 A little — under 3 km

“The Ninth Wave”, “The Last Day of Pompeii” and the knight at the crossroads, then through Mikhailovsky Garden to the Savior on Spilled Blood, whose walls are entirely mosaic, and lunch with a view of Kazan Cathedral.

👶 With kids🎨 Art☔️ If it rains

👶 7–12, 13+ years · ✗ hard with a stroller

There are steps at the entrance to the Savior on Spilled Blood and on the grand staircase of Mikhailovsky Palace; the garden paths are flat. With a baby, better in a carrier.

🗺 Open in Yandex Maps

1
🖼 Russian Museum (Mikhailovsky Palace)
Инженерная ул., 4
🎟 ticket
Rossi's classical palace with a grand staircase — the largest collection of Russian art, from icons to the avant-garde.
Entrance from Inzhenernaya 4; closed on Tuesday. Don't try to see everything: Aivazovsky's “The Ninth Wave”, Bryullov's “The Last Day of Pompeii”, Vasnetsov's “Knight at the Crossroads”, Kuindzhi's “Moonlit Night on the Dnieper” and Repin's “Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks” — make a list in advance and let your child find them on their own.
📖 More about the placeCollapse
© Елена Нечипоренко · CC BY-SA 4.0
© Елена Нечипоренко · CC BY-SA 4.0
- The Mikhailovsky Palace was built in 1819–1825 for Grand Duke Mikhail Pavlovich, the youngest son of Paul I.
- Paul I ordered money to be set aside each year for a palace for his youngest son, "so that my son could live like a tsar", but did not live to see it built.
- The museum was established by Nicholas II in 1895 as the "Russian Museum of Emperor Alexander III" and opened on 19 March 1898.
- The collection has more than 410 thousand items, including about 5 thousand icons from the 12th to the early 20th century.
- In 1941 more than 7,500 of the most valuable exhibits were evacuated to Molotov, and not one was damaged during the war.
- Besides the Mikhailovsky Palace, the museum also owns the Marble and Stroganov palaces, St Michael's Castle and Peter I's Summer Palace.
🚶 on foot
2
🌳 Mikhailovsky Garden
🚪 entrance from the Griboedov Canal Embankment
🆓 free entry
A landscape garden behind the Russian Museum with a pond, lawns and Parland's ornate fence on the Savior on Blood side.
From the museum — to the garden behind the palace: a pond, ducks and avenues to the ornate fence by the Savior. The garden is also closed on Tuesday.
📖 More about the placeCollapse
© Vyacheslav Bukharov · CC BY-SA 4.0
© Александровы АГ · CC BY-SA 4.0
© GAlexandrova · CC BY-SA 4.0
- In the early 18th century the garden was called the Third Summer Garden — to distinguish it from Peter I's other two gardens.
- From 1712 a residence for Catherine I was built here, and in the greenhouses the gardener grew bananas and pineapples.
- Under Anna Ioannovna part of the garden was set aside as a "jagd-garten" — a place to hunt deer, boar and hares.
- Parland's fence was put up in 1907, when part of the garden went to the Savior on Blood and the new canal embankment.
- In 2001 a full reconstruction of the garden began, after which the summer festival "Imperial Gardens of Russia" started to be held here.
🚶 on foot
3
🏛 Church of the Savior on Blood
наб. канала Грибоедова, 2Б
🎟 ticket
A colorful church in the Old Russian style with enamel and gilded domes on the spot where Alexander II was wounded.
Inside, everything — walls, vaults, icons — is covered in mosaic; let your child go up close and find individual pieces of smalt. Tickets online or at the box office at the entrance; closed on Wednesday.
📖 More about the placeCollapse
© Wolfgang Moroder · CC BY-SA 3.0
© Florstein · CC BY-SA 4.0
- The church, 81 meters tall, took 24 years to build — from 1883 to 1907.
- Alexander III rejected the designs of two competitions and approved the design by Alfred Parland and Archimandrite Ignaty (Malyshev).
- The mosaics were made by Vladimir Frolov's workshop from sketches by more than 30 artists, among them Viktor Vasnetsov and Mikhail Nesterov.
- During the siege the church was used as a morgue, and after the war as a scenery warehouse of the Maly Opera Theater.
- In 1961 steeplejacks found a German high-explosive shell in the central dome, which had lain there for 18 years.
- The museum opened on 19 August 1997 — exactly 90 years after the church was consecrated.
🚶 on foot
4
☕️ Singer House and Café René
Невский пр., 28
▮▮▮▯▯
Along Griboedov Canal about 7 minutes to the Singer House. A café on the second floor of the House of Books, windows onto Kazan Cathedral; after lunch drop into the bookshop's children's department.
🍴 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.