Tuesday, September 21, 2010

St Petersburg

A relatively brief eight-hour trip on the train to the city formerly known as Leningrad. Here are some photos from the Church of the Saviour on Spilled Blood which is my favourite-named church so far. Its called that because it is built on the spot where Tsar Alexander II was assassinated by revolutionaries in 1881, which is ironic because he was a highly progressive and reform-minded tsar and his son who became tsar upon his death, Alexander III, was very reactionary. All of the interiors of the church are mosaics.


1 comment:

  1. Worth checking out if there's any museum etc of the seige of Leningrad - one of the appalling stories of the Second World War. Also, if you're heading to Finland, see if they have momentos of the Winter War - an extraordinary conflict in which the Finns absolutely routed vastly numerically superior Soviets time and again though they were ultimately fighting a zero sum game which they could only lose.

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