Monday is the Hermitage’s day off, so I Ubered to Marble Palace. It’s a branch of Mikhailovsky Palace which, along with the Rossi and Benois Wings, holds the cultural treasures of the State Russian Museum. Founded by Tsar Alexander III, this is where much of the privately owned artwork, confiscated by the state after the revolution, ended up. It was an eclectic mix of grand rooms, like the Marble hall of the eponymous palace.
This gold box and these spoons made me hanker to get back to working on my own bronze box and silver spoons A pair of hinged cuffs is from the special exhibition Treasures of Ancient Russia. Along with the obligatory portraits of Peter, Catherine & Co, was this precious spaniel, who looks like an ancestor of my Maddy.
Sit down and make me a lap.
There were portraits of working class folk who looked abysmally down-trodden, and this guy. Even in Russia, the dude abides.
Wishing he was wearing a bathrobe,
Lenin and Stalin, chillaxin’. And this jolly Bolshevik. Cleopatra presides over the grand staircase. The sculpture reminded me more of Teresa in ecstasy than a snake bit woman suffering an agonizing death. Strolled up Nevsky Prospect to have tea at the famed Eliseyev Emporium, a gourmet establishment with marvelous windows.
Mechanical dolls caper around pastries, beneath winged cupids that raise and lower.
Inside, the décor was pretty enchanting too, stained glass, twinkly lights, a player piano that performed the Moonlight sonata. Alas. I should have just eaten with my eyes. This fall into the category of supposedly fun thing I’ll never do again. Not only was it clearly geared to tourists the food, charmingly presented, was mediocre – sandwiches were soggy on one side and dried out on the other, the cake tasted refrigerated, and the tea was weak. The prices were insane, but I was expecting that. In fairness, the worst aspect was out of their control. And elegant looking older couple – probably my age – sat next to me and smelled overpoweringly of mothballs. You might be luckier.
Walked to a grocery store on my way back to the hotel to pick up some milk and some chocolate. Priorities, yo. On the shelf was in the bread section was this little treat.
I spent Saturday lounging around my hotel room, looking at the blue and gold starred church dome through the skylight, doing some hand laundry, and finding creative ways to hang it up to dry. I caught up on the blog. Took naps. I could feel my body soaking up the peace. A day of rest was past due.
SUNDAY – The General Staff Building
I Ubered to the grand arch in the curve of the building that faces the Hermitage. I took a left, hunting for the entrance to the General Staff building, the home of the impressionist collection. I did it out of a sense of obligation and duty, with country music cranked up in my earbuds. It’s the playlist I use when I’m happy or need extra starch in my spine. I had really low expectations, but stumbled across several pieces that surprised me, along with some excretable sculpture, (that’s not a criticism, that’s a description) and Renoir’s pug-faced women. So far I’ve avoided Malevich. Here are some particular things I enjoyed in no particular order. Oh, and there is no map, no guide to the layout of the General Staff Building of any kind. So good luck with that. I treated it like a maze.
Okay, this just cracked me up.
Detail of an artist sketching a battle at sea. As one does.
I’m enthralled when the clothing in a portrait is on display nearby.
Peter the Great in one of his military uniforms
The actual uniform he wwore – note how the sash, on the diagonal here, is wrapped and tied in the portrait.
This corset has a design of Russian and French flags, crossed. Lady played for both teams.
Vive la France! Go Bears!
Perhaps it belonged this cheerful courtesan.
If you love your job, it’s not work.
And while we’re on the subject of intimate wear, I loved this delicate batiste nightie and bold wrap. I want a shawl just like this. Though I will probably never give up sleeping in Robert’s teeshirts.
Sweet dreams are made of these.
Here’s one of those semi-completed paintings I so enjoy, this time by Degas.
The renovation of the interior of this structure was only completed a few years ago. It still has that new car smell. I love the light, the space, the room, and the lack of crowds.
Reminded me of the Getty.
The views weren’t shabby either. This is looking back toward the Hermitage.
Saw another Love Actually moment, this time a young woman and her mother.
I miss you, Bink.
These examples are just a glimpse of all the things I found to appreciate and admire. I am so glad I didn’t let my prejudices deter me. I still have two floors to go. After I called it a day, so saturated in art I could absorb no more, I did some light shopping.
Awesome teeshirt line drawing of Peter cutting off the beard of an old school Russian man. Plus, made in Russia. Double win.
Walking around I passed this street scene. This is for all y’all who imagine Russian as bleak and the citizens as grim.
My cordial and capable guide, Nina Kazarina, arrived at my hotel with driver, Igor. He was a no-nonsense man, ex-Army. If I ever need a bodyguard, I’m calling him. We spent the drive out to Pushkin getting acquainted and I relaxed, putting myself in her capable hands.
Nina Kazarina, as nice as she is pretty.
Catherine’s palace, originally a two story structure, was transformed into eye-popping opulence by her daughter the Empress Elizabeth. She embraced rococo and ordered her architect to out-flaunt Versailles. According to Nina, Elizabeth never wore a dress twice and spent money with both fists. Frankly, it was too fancy for my taste, more Vegas than Versailles, an aggressively gilded showplace. The Yusupov Palace was far more to my liking. The other downside was the hordes. Touring the smaller rooms, each a jewel box of exquisite objects, meant shuffling along, tightly packed into an endless, snaking line. I can’t imagine the fresh hell of high season. However, in the immortal words of Rick Steves, ‘if things are not to your liking, change your liking,’ I looked for what I could enjoy. Nina’s company and commentary were on the top of that list.
At the entry, you slip brown paper booties over your shoes. Everytime I looked down I thought of hobbit feet. Snicker.
Clean but slippery. Watch your step, Baggins.
It’s an excellent solution, when the floors are as fabulous as the ceilings, and the ceilings are intricate examples of every embellishment humans can devise. Security looks in bags and takes water bottles, but you can mark your and retrieve it when you leave. We did.
Nina pointed out a pair of small cupids at the top of the grand staircase. More bronze than gold, they were original, purposefully left unrestored. That’s when I learned this palace was virtually razed by bombing.
After the war
Nina explained that the highly visible palace was targeted by German artillery. All this aggressive gilding I see is restoration work, almost brand new. I was fascinated by a series of photos in the downstairs hallway of Russian artisans recreating former glory from a bombed out shell. The idea that people were taught these skills and employed to do this heartened me.
Artists at work on the restoration.
The fabled Amber room, lined with panels made out of blobs of resin on gold leaf, is a tourist mecca. It’s more famous for being famous than it is beautiful. Nor is it, in fact, the actual Amber room. That was looted by the Nazis in 1941, and this facsimile was installed in 2003.
The cheerfulness of Nina, and her steady commentary of interesting facts, was a huge plus, truly entertaining. She deftly led us through the labyrinth to the exit. When we emerged, I was enchanted by the magic of softly falling snow.
We walked over to the nearby Museum of Festive Carriages, which I longed to see. It looked closed, but no, we were just the only people there besides the attendants (many a pensioner supplements her income with these jobs). Between growing up on horseback, and all those regency novels I am fond of reading, I was in heaven. There were the royal ceremonial coaches, like a line of Rolls Royces.
This might poof back into a pumpkin at midnight.
Just right for a fair weather family outing.
I loved the cupids, carved wheels, fringe galore.
Loved this jaunty gold and green model, with an umbrella for shade.
Nina, looking like the Mary Poppins of guides.
It’s not all swanky bullion fringe. This carriage was a damaged by the first bomb attack on Alexander II, but remained intact. it was the second bomb that killed the Tsar.
The carriage of Alexander II, bombed by a revolutionary, was a gift from Napoleon.
I looked my fill. I’d go back in a hoofbeat. We ate in Sochi, a nearby restaurant, going for convenience over cuisine. A cafeteria with multiple stations and black and white film footage of Louis Armstrong projected on the wall. You could see how the vast crowds of summer could be accommodated.
The drive to Peterhof took us from snowflakes to lashing rain and then to blue skies, all in thirty minutes. It was sunny and freezing at Peterhof. “The wind is blowing from Finland,” Igor explained. Locals are exceedingly proud of the engineering of the fountains (it all runs by gravity; they sneer at Versailles’ pumped water) and the many many many gold statues (I’m hearing Terry Prachett’s dwarves singing the Gold song). Peter would arrive using that waterway. How the young boat builder must have reveled in that.
Blasted by arctic winds, I hastened inside and pitied the costumed actors who stroll the terrace.
Three of my favorite stories Nina told me: Peter put pieces of fake fruit in with the real thing. He liked to punk his dinner guests and it was a measure of just how drunk they were. Catherine II blew up a frigate for the benefit of a painter. She’d commissioned a dozen paintings of a navel battle, and he’d never seen a ship explode. The Picture Hall room, wallpapered in 368 portraits of young women, are mostly done from a single model, her head at different angles, wearing different accessories.
Instead of going back to the hotel, I asked them to drop me near my favorite restaurant, and they kindly agreed. I learned that I’ve seen enough grand palaces, that I am more interested in downstairs than upstairs. Wishing I’d come when Mon Plaisir was open.
Dinner was delicious, especially the chef’s take on beef stroganoff and the baked apple.
It’s on a bed of shaved chocolate. Mm’mm.
Thanks again, Nina. If you want a stress-free day trip, with a cordial and informed guide, she’s an excellent choice. Here’s a link to her company, Tzarina tours. www.tzarinatours.com
Ubered over the river to The Menshikov Palace, home of a proud and ambitious man. His marble bust says it all.
It’s nothing like as graceful as the Yusupov Palace, but then Menshikov rose from humble beginnings to prominence, then plummeted to a bad end after the death of his great friend and patron, Peter the Great. They were besties during their salad days in Amsterdam, which might explains his devotion to Dutch tile. It was both the fashion and outrageously expensive. Menshikov paved the walls and ceilings with it. Kind of a nouveau riche move.
Don’t look up.
Here’s his sister’s room.
Along with a lathe and wood-working tools used by Peter the Great, There was this wooden strong box. The turn of one key open 26 bolts at once.
Couldn’t find the restaurant I was looking for. Famished, I decided to take a chance on this place. It turned out to be a good call. Other patrons were Italian-suited business men and a few Chanel-suited tourist couples. I got the ‘would madam like to see the menu? ‘ move from the Maître d’, who squinted at my Chucks and tee and jeans and wanted to avoid mutual embarrassment by giving me a look at the prices. He did not realize the favorable exchange rate made this a cheap meal. The venue was nice. Light-filled, spacious, calm, excellent service, and not bad food (fish cakes, mashed potatoes, grilled veg).
Name of this place is Restaurant. Which makes it really hard to look up.
There were birds squawking and singing at random moments. I thought it was some strange attempt at ambience by audio until I saw the pair of cockatiels caged by the bar.
Ubered back across the river to the Nabokov House Museum. Opening the door was like entering a shrine. I’d read his engaging and lucid memoir, Speak, Memory years ago, and been listening to the audio book for the past week. I could see his home in my mind’s eye; especially the library, where his father practiced fencing in the morning. Ah, me. Today Nabokov’s boyhood home is nearly a ruin; a few dilapidated rooms with intact ceiling paneling, a wreck of cordoned-off stairs. The exhibits are meager; photos pinned to the walls, fragments of letters, random memorabilia.The flotsam and jetsam of his exile from the Russia of his youth. A few glass cases of butterflies alone had undiminished beauty.
Crooked things make me crazy.
A Russian language video documentary played in another room to rows and rows of empty seats and three other visitors. I guess they haven’t forgiven him. A prophet without honor in his own land.
Not ready to quit, I checked my homemade Google Map and saw the Museum of the History of Religion was only a few blocks away. Let me recommend the audio guide. It was very informative and spoken by a dry English voice. Like listening to a benevolent and cynical old man recount fairy tales. All that’s missing is the intro, ‘Once upon a time.’ Or, ‘Then the princess pricked her finger and fell asleep for a hundred years.’
Unlike the Nabokov House, there was plenty to see and hear, from shaman rites and Greek temples to over-the-top orthodox vestments, purloined, I assume, when the Bolsheviks ransacked the churches and outlawed the opium of the masses**
There were hard to define oddities, like this priest in a box
Pope to go.
Anti-Roman Catholic propaganda.
And this, which was purported to be the actual nails from the actual cross. I doubt these are the real thing.
Unexpectedly, presenting all this as childish superstition had the opposite cumulative effect. Instead of engendering doubt, it fanned the fame of possibility. If all humanity through all the ages has worshipped, has sought and acknowledged a creator, why wouldn’t there be something greater than ourselves? Change the names, the dogma, the rituals, it all points the same direction. The idea that humanity is the very pinnacle, the apotheosis of existence sounds absurd to me. Is hubris the word I’m looking for here? Arrogance, maybe.***
Biggest surprise was the exhibit of The Pure Land of a Buddha of infinite light, Amitabha.
They went all in on this display
The room was dim and blue. A shining path of starlight above and below led to a set of carved wooden sculptures representing the sphere of bliss. There was the humming drone of chanting. The Mahayana Buddha waits, enthroned. If I’d sat down, I don’t know when I would have gotten up. It was like sinking into a warm lotus pond in the summer. Bliss.
My last stop was a line of bright gold and red prayer wheels. There was a notice inviting the dear visitor to spin them, so spin I did. I went up and back and up again, saying the names of those I love in my mind, urged on by a smiling Indian babushka. It’s another trip highlight.
** “It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.” Karl Marx
*** ‘Hubris: insolent contempt that may be defined verbally as extreme or foolish pride.’
