Gullible's Travels: Peter and Paul Cathedral

Showing posts with label Peter and Paul Cathedral. Show all posts

Saturday, November 7, 2009

The Russian Journals, Part Eighteen, The Fortress and the Cannon

BOOM!!!

“Thunder,” says Julia tentatively.

Even as I am trying to force my brain to agree with her, I know darn well that horrendous noise wasn’t thunder. That we are standing in a building erected in the early 1700s, in which almost all the former tsars and emperors of Russia are buried, isn’t at all comforting, either. Nor is the fact that ancient building is in St. Petersburg, the womb of many of Russia's revolutions.

Around me I see other tourists realizing the same thing, their gazes rudely yanked from the magnificent frescoes and icons on the walls and ceilings of the cathedral, to meet the eyes of other startled tourists.

“No,” says the tour guide, “Not thunder, nor is it the start of another revolution. It is the noon cannon.”

She adds that they are so used to it, they forget to warn tourists. Sighs of relief, eyes back to the frescoes that adorn the Cathedral of Peter and Paul in St. Petersburg. The cannon from which the blank shot was fired also is located within the walls of the compound, known as the Peter and Paul Fortress, where the cathedral and other buildings are located.

In 1703, Peter the Great decided that a new city would be built in a northern swamp on the delta of the Neva River. Its primary purpose would be a fortress to defend the lands recently recaptured from the invading Swedish army. The fortress built there was called the Peter and Paul Fortress, named after apostles. Within the walls and bastions of the fortress, the Cathedral of Peter and Paul was begun in 1717 and completed in 1733, eight years after Peter’s death.

Though badly damaged during the WWII siege of Leningrad, as St. Petersburg was known during the communist rule, the fortress and its buildings were meticulously restored. Entering the cathedral, my first words were, “Oh, my.” Magnificent columns of what I assumed were pink and green marble were interspersed with icons and frescoes. Later, closely examining the columns, I now think they are painted to look like marble, but the overall effect is a breath-taking, opulent, baroque masterpiece.

This photo is the closest I have to true color, the best I could do under fluorescent lighting.

Along the sides and front left corner of the great hall are the marble tombs of all Russia’s tsars from Peter the Great onward but two, Peter II and Ivan VI. Peter’s tomb is located in a place of honor at the front of the hall and is adorned daily with fresh flowers.

Off one corner of the cathedral is a small room known as the Catherine Chapel. In it is a small tomb, the final resting spot of the meager remains of Tsar Nicholas II and his family. Alabaster plaques on the walls list each family member and the appropriate dates.

Almost a century ago, the tsar and his family, along with their servants, were murdered by Bolsheviks following the revolution of 1917. They were the last of the Romanovs, the family that had ruled Russia since the late 1600s. Their remains were first discovered in 1979, but kept secret until after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, when they were exhumed from a hiding spot near where they had been murdered, burned, and buried.

Yet to be added are the remains discovered last year of his son Alexis and daughter Maria. Genetic testings thus far have shown the newly-discovered remains to be Nicholas’s children.

At 404 feet and three inches high, the gilded spire of the bell tower within the Peter and Paul Fortress, with its angel holding a cross, can be seen from all over St. Petersburg. It has been the tallest building in the city, and only a communications tower exceeds its height. Modern construction may now have done so also.

This fortress, this cathedral, is our introduction to the riches and beauty of St. Petersburg, and there is much more to come. One steeped in religious allegory of the Russian Orthodox Church could have better appreciated the frescoes, but for me they remain cloaked in mystery—a beautiful, magical mystery.

Just before we leave, we are introduced to an important employee of the Peter and Paul Cathedral. I don’t catch its name, but all I need to know is that this cat is the official cathedral mouser. Such an important position in a place with such valuable antiquities.

We exit the cathedral by a side door, walk out into the courtyard to a softening rain. I am silent walking back through the main gate and climbing aboard the coach.

Tsar Nicholas and his family had been murdered ninety years ago, yet I have heard about them—and the sway the mad monk Rasputin had over them—all my life.

The Peter and Paul Fortress

Now, seeing the small marble tomb that encased the pitifully few bones that remain of this last Romanov family, I feel as never before how Russia is coming to terms with its tortured past.

The double-headed eagle emblem of Imperial Russia, and of the current Russian Federation.

Monday, November 2, 2009

The Russian Journals, Part Fifteen, The Resolute Jewel on the Neva

Once upon an early eighteenth century, the man in charge decided that a mosquito-infested swamp would be a terrific place to build a new fort. It wasn’t the little vampires with the long, blood-sucking proboscises that enthralled him when he chose the place, but instead the site’s advantageous location adjacent to the Baltic Sea.

Here, he thought, would be the best place to keep those marauding Swedes out of his country, no matter that the Swedes had held this territory for a few decades. This spot would provide Russia with access to a warm water port in the Gulf of Finland.

Thus was founded a city that became known as St. Petersburg. (Also Petrograd, Leningrad, Petersburg, and Piter.) It was Peter I the Great, Tsar of Russia, who founded the city and named it after his patron saint, Peter the Apostle. Tsar Peter was enamored of all things European, and often traveling incognito through the countries and soaking up Western culture. Deciding that his city would be fashioned after the great cities of Europe, he hired a Swiss Italian architect and construction of the Peter and Paul Fortress commenced, the first brick and stone building of his fledgling city.

Three months later, wind and atmospheric pressure combined to create a phenomenon known as a “long wave.” Though the citadel was being built three miles inland, the long wave rolled in from the Baltic Sea, through the Gulf of Finland to the shallow Neva River Bay, and up the Neva River, where it inundated the construction site with six feet of water, washing away much of the building material.

Tsar Peter was said to be six feet eight inches tall, a huge man for his day. His head, however, was far too small in proportion to his massive body, and perhaps that had something to do with Peter ordering the construction to recommence. Thus began St. Petersburg’s long history of reconstruction. Since then the city has endured 207 major floods, fires, and a 900 day siege by German and Finnish armies during World War II that did massive damage to the city and killed hundreds of thousands of its residents and refugees.

The Peter and Paul Fortress with the bell tower spire, middle, and cathedral dome at left.

In 1713, Tsar Peter I moved the capital of Russia to St. Petersburg. It remained the capital until the 1917 revolution, when Moscow became the capital again.

Eventually the growing city covered a hundred and one islands in the braided delta of the Neva River, though construction through the ages has reduced that number to forty-four, spanned by more than six hundred bridges, many of them drawbridges. More than six million people live in the greater St. Petersburg area.

The Neva begins at Lake Ladoga, the largest lake in Europe, and flows forty-six miles to the gulf. Within the city are fifty rivers, streams, and canals, with a total length of a hundred miles.

Our tour group approached St. Petersburg on a morning so foggy the MS Nikolay Chernyskevsky was forced to lay by until navigation into the crowded city waterways was allowed. Along the way, we passed a number of exquisite country homes.

Eventually we tied up near the newest bridge in the city, and its first suspension bridge.

The first day in St. Petersburg was wet—very, very wet. Rained poured out of aluminum skies all day. Not very nice weather for touring, but it did make for some nice photos.

Upper portion of Smolny Cathedral

A couple of those long-legged Russian women

All the buildings are equipped with six inch rain drains.

The upper domes of the Church of the Savior on Blood, which marks the spot where Emperor Alexander II received mortal wounds from a bomb thrown by a terrorist.

The two Rostrums, which were once lighthouses, outside the former Stock Exchange building on the right, now a Naval museum. The spire of the Peter and Paul bell tower is in the background

By the time we concluded our first day’s tour, the clouds were parting and the rest of our stay was in warm, bright sunshine.