St. Petersburg, Russia

We were in St. Petersburg only four days and spent nearly all of our time inside the Hermitage ... so, we are including only one city picture. The old part of St. Petersburg is laced with many canals connecting to the Neva River. Some of them form arcs around the old town, so the map looks something like Amsterdam. Very quickly the traveler adjusts to the Cyrillic Alphabet. Here are three easy signs ... see if you can figure them out. (Answers at the end.) xx Hermitage There are galleries, there are art museums, there are great art museums ... and then there is the Hermitage. The Hermitage is composed of five buildings: The Winter Palace, The Little Hermitage, the Large Hermitage made up of the Old and New Hermitage, and the Hermitage Theatre. The Winter Palace alone has 1057 rooms and 117 staircases. We are on a bridge over the Neva River and the Hermitage begins with the dark-roofed building and extends out of the picture to the right. Visitors usually approach the Hermitage through the arch of the General Staff building into the expansive Palace Square. The treasures of the Hermitage include the Hermitage itself. The opulence and splendor of the rooms, the floors, the ceilings, the staircases -- everything -- is overwhelming. Number 1 among the 117 staircases is the Jordan Staircase, so called because on January 6th each year the imperial family would descend these steps to the Neva River to commemorate Christ's baptism in the River Jordan. As part of the ceremony, the Tsar would drink a cup of the Neva water. Records show that despite the river's filth, no Tsar ever got sick. Although the Hermitage is a wonderous palace, it is also an art museum. Often in rooms like this it was difficult to focus ... there is the inlaid floor, the spectacular ceiling as well as the paintings and sculpture. There are 3 million works in the collection including 12 Rembrandts, two Leonard da Vincis, a Michelangelo, and on and on ... Around every corner is another hallway leading to another sequence of rooms or another wing to be explored. Click On Picture Our favorite room was the Pavilion Hall in the Little Hermitage, a lovely white and gold room with 28 chandeliers and a mechanized gold peacock clock. Click On Picture The Pavilion Hall may be our favorite, but as you can see, there are a lot of runners-up. It's hard to describe how impressive some of these works are, but this beautiful vase is a good example. Click On Picture We were in awe of all of the art masterpieces, but the works that surprised and delighted us most were stone table tops by anonymous artisans. x These four pictures are details from large tables; the moths are 2 in. or 5 cm. across. Notice that the upper wings of the moth on the left are made from slices of fossilized brain coral. The Cyrillic signs read: Start Snyder Finish. Did you get them???