Sunday, September 02, 2012

Rainy Sunday

We spent a rainy Sunday morning in the Hermitage Museum as seen here from our canal tour later in the day.

 It is the biggest museum in the world where it it said that it would take 11 years to tour it if you spent one minute in front of each piece of art.  I believe it.


A wonderful place.



Lots of decor and structure.


And Rembrandts

The city has a lot of canals and rivers.

And the original Cruiser Aurora that started the 1917 Revolution.


1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Thanks again for some great pictures.

I never realized St Petersburg was that far north. The social elites who are the subjects the great Russian novels were always dashing back and forth between Moscow and "Petersburg," as they called it, and in the winter time it was in horse drawn sleighs and carriages on runners.

I got a big kick out of seeing the battleship. The Aurora is famous to anyone who studies Socialism or the Russian Revolution. The sailors, many of whom were bolsheviks (a democratically run socialist labor organization founded by Lenin), mutinied and set off the revolution. Later on, in 1921, they rebelled again, this time against Lenin, when he took the authoritarian turn that eventually led to Stalinism and the big black eye Socialism lives with until today. This later, Kronstadt Rebellion, was put down.

What a treat it must have been to see the Hermitage, and all those Rembrandts! The Hermitage's collection was mostly assembled by the empress (female czar) Catherine the Great, as you no doubt know. Next time I have a spare 15 years that's where I'll be!

Again I urge your readers to click on one of the photos, which sets up a nice slide show of full screen pictures you can control manually. That's one of the best views of the Aurora you'll see anywhere!