The summer palace sits within a vast park, which is filled with trees, groomed walks, flowers, fountains, and statuary. The palace itself is filled with treasures and has many many features covered with gold leaf. Anticipating German occupation, steps were taken to remove many of the treasures, at least to take samples, including samples of wall coverings, furniture, china, and other items. The palace was painstakingly restored follwing the war. At the risk of showing you too many pictures of it, here is an initial view of the palace as we approached it for our tour.
There are many paintings in the palace. Here is one from a series related to some famous naval battle. There are also many of members of the royal family.
We saw several immense chandeliers.
Here you can get an idea of how much gold leaf adorned walls and features throughout the palace.
This dining area included very fancy china, silver, and crystal settings.
This was a throne that Tsar Nicholas used. That "H" is an "N" in the cyrillic alphabet.
Nearly every room had an ornate porcelain or tile stove like this one.
Here is a view from the "front" of the palace looking toward the sea and some of the fountains.
There were some rooms, an "oriental room" for example, where pictures were not allowed. The room below was described as a portrait room. However, the portraits were simply for the purpose of decoration and were not family members or other well-known individuals. In fact, we were told that all of the portraits were posed by about 12 individuals total, and so you could see similarities in the faces, though the poses varied significantly. The artist had "hidden" several of himself throughout.
Most of the floors and much of the furniture involved various kinds of woods and many intricate inlays.
The following three shots provide a sample of the fountains in the garden. The first and third are the major fountains that extend from the front of the palace toward the Baltic Sea.
Following the tour of this palace, we were transported by hydrofoil across the sea to St. Petersburg. This took approximately a half hour. Peterhof and the palace sit at quite some distance from St. Petersburg itself. Once we arrived there, we were treated to a beef stroganoff lunch at one of the grand hotels in the city. A small group of musicians played authentic Russian music for us during the luncheon.
After lunch we took a bus tour of the city, with a few stops at selected sites. The building below was the winter palace for the Tsars. Now it is occupied by the Hermitage Museum.
We must have seen at least a half dozen wedding parties during the afternoon. Most were at famous or important locations for picture taking. I thought the brides' dresses were quite different from the more delicate styles we typically see.
Below is the cruiser Aurora, which fired a first shot to signal the beginning of the October revolution of 1917 (that is to signal that the winter palace should be stormed).
Finally, we toured the Church of the Resurrection (Church on the Spilled Blood) which was constructed atop the spot where Alexander II was assassinated in 1881. In addition to its fascinating exterior, the interior is completely (and I mean every square inch) covered with tile mosaics documenting the life of Christ from birth to ascension.
St. Petersburg is filled with history and elegance. There is so much to see there. If you are interested in learning more about some of the places mentioned above and other sites in St. Petersburg, you can find an interesting virtual tour of the city here.
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