Hi everyone!
Hello everybody! Welcome to "Russian with Passion".
Today I will tell you about Saint Petersburg.
The second capital of Russia,
the Northern capital of Russia
of the Cultural capital of Russia.
It is quite windy here.
So the wind is piercing and it is very cold sometimes.
But well it is practically winter.
Saint Petersburg.
And the first thing we did was walking along the Nevskiy prospekt.
Saint Petersburg, one of few cities, has an exact date of birth.
The population of the city is more than five million people.
St. Isaac's Cathedral.
The St. Isaac's Cathedral had been built for forty years:
since 1818 to 1858 upon the project of a French architect - Auguste de Montferrand.
The hight was 101 and a half meters.
The total area is eleven thousand square meters.
It had been the main temple in Russian for a long time.
500 kilos of Afghan lazurite - two blue columns
in the center near the the Royal doors.
The plots are mainly biblical.
Everything on the top are dry paintings.
"Adam and Eve" is his painting right over the doors.
In the east near the iconostasis there is a big paining by Bruni 'the Last Judgement'.
The Christ will come to Earth to judge the resurrected by their deeds.
The mosaics were composed using by the so called Roman method.
A concrete slab was covered with plaster, and the outlines of the painting was put onto the plaster,
Gradually the plaster was chopped off by little pieces,
gluing by mastic, a gluing material, pieces of smalt, colored glass,
picking the colors so that the mosaic would not differ from the paining.
In different times it was copied several times,
and one of the copies is in front of you.
It was passed on in one family in Saint Petersburg,
until it was gifted to the Cathedral.
And now we will take a look at the colonnade.
There on the top near the dome you get a bird's-eye of the city.
The colonnade has over two hundred steps.
Here they are different.
I am a little out of breath.
Here it is, Petersburg, spread out.
There is other spiring stairs which leads even higher.
The Hermitage. Now I'll go to the Hermitage.
Come on, follow me!
Catherine the Second. Catherine the Great.
The Hermitage is one of the biggest museums in Russia.
The exposition of the museum shows the way the world's art develops
since the Stone Age to the end of the twentieth century.
The collection of the primeval art and archaeological art
from the territory of the previous USSR are of great importance.
As I have already said, the Museum was based
on the art collection,
which was bought personally by the Russian empress
Catherine the Second.
The Hermitage consists of five main buildings,
the largest on is The Winter Palace.
The complex also includes Little Hermitage, Big Hermitage,
New Hermitage and Hermitage theater.
There is something to catch your eye here,
many paintings, sculptures, tapestries,
beautiful furniture, fine interior designs.
And at the end of this fruitful day
we went to look at how the bridges are drawn.