Founded in 1703, Saint Petersburg is located in the northwest of Russia, on the Baltic Coast, at the mouth of the Neva River, and is the second largest city in the central and second largest city of Russia, the central city of the Northwest Territories, and the capital of Leningrad Oblast. St. Petersburg is an important land and water transportation hub in Russia, the northernmost of the world's cities with a population of more than one million, known as the "northern capital" of Russia, with an area of 606 square kilometers.
In 1703, Peter the Great (1672-1725) built the Peter and Paul Fortress on Rabbit Island in the Neva Delta, heavily guarded against the Swedish army, which was later expanded into a city. In 1712, Peter the Great moved its capital from Moscow to 1918, when it was the cultural, political and economic center of Russia; in 1924 it was renamed Leningrad, and in 1991 it was renamed St. Petersburg.
Beginning on September 8, 1941, the German Nazis besieged the area for 872 days, the longest siege and counter-siege operation during World War II. Leningrad paid a terrible price for this, according to statistics: a total of 642,000 people died of starvation and cold, more than 20,000 died of German air raids and shelling, 3,200 buildings were destroyed, the city was completely unrecognizable, and the streets were turned into rubble piles. After the victory of the anti-siege, people began to rebuild their homes, repairing the monuments destroyed by fascist artillery fire one by one. Through the tireless efforts of artists and craftsmen, the city has regained its former style.
St. Petersburg is a city of culture.
It is famous for a large number of historical and cultural monuments such as the Hermitage Museum (Winter Palace), Peter Palace (Summer Palace), Konstantin Palace, Ekaterina Palace, Pavlovsk Palace, Yusupov Palace, Smolny Palace, Peter and Paul Fortress, Isa kiev Cathedral, Russian National Museum, etc.; many famous Russian poets and writers, such as Pushkin, Lemontov (1814-1841), Gorky (1868- 1936) and others have lived and worked here; there are 53 national universities, more than 400 scientific research institutions, more than 2,000 libraries, 45 art galleries, 264 museums, 62 cinemas, more than 80 theaters, more than 100 troupes and 38 stadiums; 36 projects such as the city's historical center and related monuments, as well as palace garden buildings on the outskirts of the city, totaling more than 4,000 buildings, historical and cultural sites are inscribed on the World Heritage List...
Built in 1710, Nevsky Prospekt is the most famous historical district of St. Petersburg and one of the main thoroughfares connecting the city with the Neva River, with a total length of 4.5 kilometers, and there are many opera houses, libraries, museums, concert halls and cinemas on both sides of the street and in the adjacent squares, as well as churches (Orthodox Kazan Cathedral, Protestant Peter and Paul Cathedral, Catholic St. Catherine's Church, Dutch Church, Armenian Church, etc.) and the former homes of celebrities. The architecture here still retains the style of the 18th and 19th centuries, and each building is intricately carved.
Pushkin Village (Imperial Village) is located 24 kilometers south of St. Petersburg, mainly composed of Yekaterina Palace and Alexander Palace, but also a complex of various garden art styles, Baroque gorgeous, classical nature, romantic sentimentality, and Chinese style exoticism, together woven into a structurally complete, colorful garden architectural complex, is a typical of the world's garden art. In 1937, on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of Pushkin's death, the imperial village was renamed Pushkin City.
The Winter Palace is a blue and white building built between 1754 and 1762, located on the Palace Square in St. Petersburg, originally the Tsar's Palace, about 230 meters long, 140 meters wide, 22 meters high, enclosed rectangle, covering an area of 90,000 square meters, with a construction area of 46,000 square meters, and 1,057 halls, 1,886 doors and 1,945 windows.
After the October Revolution, the Winter Palace was opened as part of the National Hermitage Museum, and in the spacious and bright exhibition hall, there are 2.7 million cultural relics of various types, including about 15,000 paintings, about 12,000 sculptures, about 620,000 prints and drawings, about 600,000 excavated cultural relics, 260,000 practical works of art, and about 1 million coins and medals. The collection is divided into 7 parts: primitive cultural history, ancient Greco-Roman culture and art, Oriental ethnic culture and art, Russian culture, Western European art history, coins, crafts, etc., and displayed in more than 350 exhibition halls in order of region and chronology, and the exhibition route adds up to 30 kilometers long, so it is called the world's longest art gallery; the Hermitage Museum is also one of the four major museums in the world.
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(Text + Photo: Wang Yongyun)