Exploring St. Petersburg
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St. Petersburg is a city
of haunting magnificence, an imperial capital that seems to have been built
as a monument to its own passing. Less than three centuries have passed
since Peter the Great began building his grand city on the Gulf of Finland,
but it is difficult to visit its vast, crystalline squares and palaces without
feeling the enormity of the gulf that separates that time from our own.
All of which, of course, makes St. Petersburg more evocative of Russia's
past than any place except perhaps the Moscow Kremlin. This impression is
only deepened by a more familiar acquaintance. The enigmatic homeliness
of Peter's cottage and the city's placid canals may contrast with the brooding
grandeur of the Winter Palace, but they share with it a graceful stillness
that is difficult to forget.
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