Summer is moving toward a close (we are back to school in a little under a month) and in deciding to take advantage of the nice weather and free time, Matt and I have bought a book about unusual sights in St. Petersburg and things you will not find in travel books!
The first day we explored some of the things listed we were more toward the city center. The station is called Dostoevskaya as it is near the location of the author Dostoevsky's last flat.
So it was fitting that the first sight we found was this statue of the author himself! It's actually very close to the metro and we were surprised we had not noticed it before!
The second sight was only blocks away. This building was built in 1900 and has been updated since then, but has always kept its fun old Russian style. The bottom of it now houses a dentist.
You can see that the dom (building) number is worked into the design work!
There is a nice little street that has a bunch of different sculptures that was very nice as well! Below is a footbridge over a series of mini fountains.
Dvors (courtyards) down this street had their own artwork as well. This witch is from The Wizard the Emerald City, which is a Russian "version" of the Baum book. The Russian "version" takes many of the same events from the original but also adds to them. One of the walls of the next courtyard had two tigers that Ellie, the Dorothy of the Russian story, meets in the book.
The Tin Man!
Down the street there was a series of sculptures. The one below is simply titled the Blind Man.
These angels also had a third with them and they all face in different directions.
This director was across from the film school on this street.
And inside another dvor were flying monkeys on the overhangs!
These soldiers decorated the benches around a playground.
There were two sights in this dvor. The one is the chimney-sweep on a ladder and the other is the Soviet mural on the next building over.
This building was one of the older communal Soviet buildings and a famous poet lived in this building as well. There's a nice picture of her on it but it's covered by the scaffold. :-(
The second time we went searching was on our own island! It was fun to find things that we had seen before and never noticed as well as things we did not know were there!
The church below was built in the 1700's and is by the main metro we use.
This house is one of the oldest in St Petersburg and was built by a friend of Peter the Great's. It also dates to the early 1700's.
You can see the sign says Apteka which is a drugstore. However this building was not only used as a drugstore, but the man who owned it experimented with medicines and worked at finding new medicines as well.
This building is mostly just noted for the fun architecture!
If you look you can see that the entry way to the building is actually asymmetrical.
Another discovery we have made is a really fun website that gives the dates and architect of almost any building in the city. We knew that the school had once been a church but we were actually able to find out more about it.
Here's a picture of the school now:
And here is a picture of the building when it was a church:
It's just stunning to see a sketch of it with the domes and the belfry!
It was called the Church of Our Lady of Tikhvin and was built in 1903 and it was consecrated in 1906. It was closed in 1923 and "remodeled" to fit new needs as a department store. And now it's our school!
So we've really been enjoying the opportunity to find new things and get to know our city better!
