Isaakievsky cathedral

The first Cathedral on St. Isaac's square appeared in Peter's time, as workers from the Admiralty needed their religious building. The current Isaac is the fourth and largest in the city. It is still one of the tallest buildings in St. Petersburg (204 meters). It was built under three sovereigns. The talented young architect Auguste Montferrand gave his project to Alexander I in 1818, near the temple under construction there was a Decembrist uprising, the main curator of the construction was Nicholas I, who did not live to see the consecration of the Cathedral. One of the most complex structures in the history of St. Petersburg, the resources for the construction of which were brought from all over the country, was completed only in 1858. Its brilliant author, who for 40 years managed to change the appearance of St. Petersburg, died almost immediately after the consecration of the Cathedral. Largely because of this, there is still a legend that Montferrand divined that he would die as soon as the construction of Isaac, and that is why the construction of the Cathedral was so long. While Isaac is still a Museum. There are still important artifacts like Foucault's pendulum that are worth seeing. And you should definitely climb the colonnade of the Cathedral and look at the city from above, reminding yourself that St. Petersburg is especially beautiful from a bird's eye view.

Hermitage and Palace square

The ensemble of the Palace consists of the Imperial Winter Palace, the building of the Guards corps, the General staff building with a triumphal arch and the Alexander column. I must say that before there was a meadow, cows grazed on it, and the Palace owes its present gloss to the era of Alexander I, when a huge area was brought to a single style, and Montferrand erected the famous pillar of Alexandria, which became the new dominant. A visit to the Hermitage and the General staff should spend more than one day: the number of exhibits in the luxurious halls of the account is not. However, one visit will be enough to feel the atmosphere of the main repositories of art in the city on the Neva river, to imagine the weekdays of the August persons who ruled the country in the past.

The embankment of the Winter canal

Petersburg is a city of bridges and embankments. Citizens can not do without walking by the water under the soothing rustle of the Neva river, and tourists anyway at least once will go to the waterway of the Northern capital to at least admire the bridges. That's when they begin to understand the city. But to feel the special romance of St. Petersburg, we offer a walk along the embankment of the Winter canal. It is a small canal connecting the Neva river and the Moika river near the Winter Palace. Winter groove became famous for the tragic story of poor Lisa, who jumped off a bridge, holding a portrait of a loved one. This story so impressed the great Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky that he decided to insert a scene of a girl's suicide in his new Opera the Queen of spades. However, today nobody remembers it, but there are true romantics who catch the dawn breaking from under an arch before filling city streets. And all this splendor is complemented by the cries of seagulls-a reminder that Petersburgers live by the sea.

The St. Petersburg datsan

Buddhist temple "Datsan Gunzechoyney — -" the source of the Holy teachings of the all-Suffering Lord hermit " and the northernmost Buddhist temple in the world, as well as the most expensive in Europe, built in the early XX century. Permission for the construction of the temple was obtained in 1900, after which in 1909 the representative of the Dalai Lama XIII in Russia Agvan Dorzhiev purchased a plot of land on the banks of the Malaya Nevka. The temple was built by the author of the Eliseevsky shop in St. Petersburg, Baranovsky, with the involvement of several Orientalists and specialists in Buddhism, who made sure that the building complies with all religious canons. The result is one of the most expensive Buddhist temples in Europe, which many people know about today, but have never been there. Although there, for example, you can admire the stained glass Windows, made according to the sketches of Nicholas Roerich, eat ethnic food and feel that you are not in St. Petersburg at all. A tourist after visiting the temple will note that the Northern capital is a city of many cultures.