Vasilyevsky in the rain: Menshikov, the Academy, the market

⏱ 5 h🚶 1.6 km🍽 2📍 4 stops

🐢 A little — under 3 km

The tiles of the Petrine palace, models of cathedrals at the Academy of Arts, lunch in the market's food hall and mussels at a Belgian pub — all within five minutes of each other.

🍽 Food tour🎨 Art☔️ If it rains

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1
🖼 Menshikov Palace
Университетская наб., 15
🎟 ticket
One of the city's first stone buildings — Menshikov's yellow palace with Petrine-era tiled rooms.
Only with a tour at timed sessions from 11:00, the last at 16:30; closed Mon. See the rooms lined entirely with Dutch tiles.
📖 More about the placeCollapse
© Florstein · CC BY-SA 4.0
© Никонико962 · CC BY-SA 4.0
- Construction of the palace began in May 1710 to a design by Giovanni Maria Fontana, who was replaced by Gottfried Schädel in 1713.
- Peter called the palace the Embassy House: foreign ambassadors were received here and feasts held.
- The future Empress Anna Ioannovna celebrated her wedding to the Duke of Courland in the palace.
- In 1727 Menshikov was exiled to Berezov, and from 1731 the palace was taken over by the Land Gentry (later Cadet) Corps.
- By 1727 there were 13 rooms here faced with white and blue tiles, of which four survive; some of the tiles came from Delft.
- The grand staircase has survived from 1716–1720.
- Since 1981 the palace has been a branch of the Hermitage with the exhibition “Russian Culture of the First Third of the 18th Century”.
🚶 on foot
2
🖼 Academy of Arts Museum
Университетская наб., 17
🎟 ticket
A museum in the Academy of Arts building: casts of ancient statues that students learned from, paintings from the historical collection and big wooden models of Petersburg's cathedrals and palaces. Quiet, spacious and almost without queues.
Three buildings down the embankment; closed Mon and Tue. Start from the third floor: a wooden model of Smolny and models of St Isaac's are better than any postcard. Casts of ancient statues are on the first.
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© Florstein (Telegram:WikiPhoto.Space) · CC BY-SA 4.0
© Александровы АГ · CC BY-SA 4.0
- The Academy building was built in 1764–1788 to a design by Jean-Baptiste Vallin de la Mothe and Alexander Kokorinov.
- The museum appeared with the Academy itself in 1758 — future artists and architects were taught to draw from it.
- On the first floor are the department of casts of ancient sculpture and models of ancient architectural monuments.
- On the third floor is “The Architecture of 18th–19th-century Petersburg” in models, drawings and blueprints.
- In front of the Academy on the embankment stand Egyptian sphinxes, installed in 1834.
🚶 on foot
3
🧺 Vasileostrovsky Market
Большой пр. В.О., 16/14б
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Along 4th Line to Bolshoy Prospekt — 4 minutes. In the food hall you can get pizza, pho and khinkali for the whole group and sit at one table.
🍴 A gourmet market from the 1930s which, after the 2019 renovation, is a food hall with 30+ stalls and grocery rows with their own cheese dairy. What to order: Roman pizza at Piopizza, pho at Bổ, khinkali (Georgian dumplings) at Georgiani, oysters at Fisha.
🚶 on foot
4
🍸 Brugge
наб. Макарова, 22
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11 minutes along 6th Line to Makarova Embankment. An evening with Belgian beer: mussels, Flemish goulash, waffles for dessert; book a table for Friday evening.
🍴 A Belgian pub on Makarov Embankment: more than a hundred beers on tap and in bottles, and an oyster aquarium. What to order: mussels, Flemish goulash, snails in garlic sauce, Belgian waffles.