St Petersburg: Mariinsky

The bronze horseman: Equestrian statue of Peter the Great

For our third and final walk in St Petersburg we headed into the Mariinsky district. the starting point was Pl Dekabristov (Decemberists' Sq) to the east of the Admiralty, where we started yesterday's walk around the Neva. (The Decemberists in question were of course the brave revolutionaries of 1825, rather than the wonderful indie band.)

The centrepiece of the square is the bronze horseman, a statue of Peter the Great erected by Catherine the Great. The inscription in both Cyrillic and Latin letters says "to Peter I from Catherine II - 1782". This is generally interpreted as an attempt to bolster her doubtful legitimacy as a successor of Peter.

From here it is a short stroll in the park to another of the city's landmarks, the enormous St Isaac's cathedral. Yet again there is a link to Peter - he was born on St Isaac's feast day. The cathedral was completed in 1848 after nearly 40 years' construction. The views from the colonnade under the golden dome are impressive - although partially obscured by cranes engaged on building work.



The best view from the colonnade is south towards Isaakievskaya pl, with the Mariinsky palace on the far side.



The baroque interior is lavish, but seems relatively restrained by comparison with the St Peter and Paul cathedral. The pink marble gives it a delicate tone.



We then walked east almost as far as the beautiful, recently restored bridge connecting the two buildings of the main post office.




From here we went down to the Moyka river embankment and at the next bridge had this lovely view of St Isaac's on the left and the Yusupov Palace on the right. This is where Rasputin was killed. There is a wonderful portrait of the young Prince Yusupov, his assassin, in the Russian Museum by Ilya Repin, regarded as Russia's greatest artist.



Our route then took us past the famous, but from the outside at least, not particularly inspiring Mariinsky theatre, to reach the Nikolsky Cathedral. The Cathedral is under restoration, but is still operating, as it apparently did throughout the soviet era. The devotion of the worshippers, crossing themselves three times as they left in the Orthodox fashion, was readily apparent.



Some distance in front of the cathedral is the wonderful bell tower which faces on to the Griboedov canal.



Not far away along another canal we saw, but did not succeed in identifying, another splendid onion domed structure.



Perhaps the only flaw in this walk was that we now had to simply retrace our steps back to St Isaac's and our nearby hotel.

Rating: four stars.