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Walking routes in Saint Petersburg

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      The Datsan, Staraya Derevnya and Yelagin Island

      ⏱ 1 h 5 min🚶 2.2 km🍽 0📍 3 stops
      🐢 A little — under 3 km

      The Hermitage's modern storage facility, the northernmost Buddhist temple — and across the bridge to Yelagin Island. Unusual Petersburg beyond the center.

      🏛 History and architecture🎨 Art🌳 Parks and nature⏱ An hour or so
      🗺 Open in Yandex Maps
      1. 1
        🖼 Hermitage Storage Facility "Staraya Derevnya"
        Заусадебная ул., 37В
        🎟 ticket · guided tours only, groups are limited — book in advance
        Open storage: carriages, the Emir of Bukhara's tent, furniture — by guided tour
        We look at the building from outside; the carriages and the Emir of Bukhara's tent are shown on a guided tour by appointment.
        📖 More about the placeCollapse
        Hermitage Storage Facility "Staraya Derevnya"
        © Florstein · CC BY-SA 4.0
        • The first phase of the storage facility opened in 2003, for Petersburg's 300th anniversary.
        • The tour route through the main storage building stretches for about a kilometre.
        • In the "Tapestry Theatre" the tapestries hang in huge frames on wheels that run on remote-controlled rails.
        • The cashmere military tent was given to Alexander III by the Emir of Bukhara, Abdul-Ahad Khan, in 1893 — you can see it both from outside and from inside.
        • The open furniture storage holds about a thousand examples of European furniture from the 16th–19th centuries.
        • The façade frame of the restoration building is decorated with petroglyphs from Onega and the White Sea, enlarged ten times.
        • In the courtyard there is an amphitheatre whose "spectators" are 33 spherical thuja trees.
      2. 🚶 on foot
      3. 2
        🏛 Buddhist Datsan Gunzechoinei
        Приморский пр., 91
        A dark granite temple in the Tibetan style, with ornaments and prayer wheels at the entrance.
        The northernmost Buddhist temple
        📖 More about the placeCollapse
        Buddhist Datsan Gunzechoinei
        © ElenaLitera · CC BY-SA 4.0
        • The temple was built from 1909 to 1915 on the initiative of Agvan Dorzhiev, the representative of the 13th Dalai Lama, who became its first abbot.
        • The design was made by N. M. Berezovsky and Gavriil Baranovsky, the author of the Eliseyev Emporium on Nevsky.
        • The first service was held here on 21 February 1913, for the 300th anniversary of the House of Romanov.
        • The Buddha statue for the new temple was donated by King Rama VI of Siam.
        • The stained glass with the eight auspicious Buddhist symbols is linked to Nicholas Roerich, who sat on the building committee.
        • In the war the building housed a military radio station, whose antenna was raised into the sky on a balloon.
        • Daniil Kharms mentioned the "golden top of the Buddhist pagoda" in his novella The Old Woman (1939).
        • The temple was returned to Buddhists in 1990, and it has carried the name Gunzechoinei — "source of the teaching of the All-Compassionate" — since 1991.
      4. 🚶 on foot
      5. 3
        🌳 Yelagin Island (Central Park of Culture and Rest)
        🎟 partly ticketed · Free entry on weekdays; ticketed on weekends and holidays
        Boats, squirrels, bicycles
        Across the bridge to the island
        📖 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.

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