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Travel: St. Petersburg (part 2)

The splendor of czarist Russia is preserved in the city’s suburban estates
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Whether it’s a dacha or a palace the tradition of owning a second home in the country is deeply rooted in Russian culture. For most Russians the dacha is a modest cottage, often no more than a shack, a place to escape the confines of a tiny city apartment and reestablish a connection with the earth.

The garden, no matter how large or small, is an integral part of every dacha. Whether it’s only a few potted flowers or a plot of vegetables destined to be sold at the local market, the dacha garden is a source of pride and place of refuge for its urban owners.

And perhaps more than any other aspect of Russian society the dachas of the people and the summer palaces of the czars epitomize the gulf in wealth between the ruling elite and their subjects.

The city of St. Petersburg was barely a decade old in 1712 when Peter the Great made it Russia’s capital. But the grumbling nobles and senior administrators who were forced to leave the comforts of Moscow and move to the wilderness of the northern frontier wasted no time in rebuilding their privileged lives. While thousands of peasants, drafted as forced labour, struggled to drain the swamps of the Neva lowlands and build the foundations of the new city the country estates of the privileged began to spring up around its perimeter. We visited two of these while we were in St. Petersburg last June — Peterhof, started by Peter himself in 1710, and Tsarskoye Selo, developed by Empress Elizabeth in 1741.

Our trips into the countryside begin in downtown St. Petersburg with its stately heritage buildings, domed cathedrals, and myriad canals. From there our bus winds past drab Soviet Era walk-up apartment blocks of the inner suburbs, continues through industrial areas that share the outskirts of the city with clusters of modern high-rise apartment blocks, and finally emerges from the city onto the flat parkland of the Neva lowlands. The rural countryside is dotted with tiny villages where simple wooden houses, many of them the dachas of St. Petersburg’s apartment dwellers, are tucked in among small gardens and a few shade trees. And then we arrive at one of St. Petersburg’s suburban estates, where the ruling elite once spent their leisure time surrounded by unimaginable luxury and wealth.

 

PETERHOF

From the Peterhof parking lot we make our way past a cluster of souvenir kiosks and into the estate. No longer the exclusive retreat of the privileged classes Peterhof, like most of St. Peterburg’s suburban estates, has opened its doors to the world and become one of the busiest tourist destinations in all of Russia. But the place is so enormous that neither the grounds nor the buildings seem crowded. The estate, once the summer residence of Peter and his wife Catherine, sprawls across an area of 1,500 acres. Its vast formal gardens are dotted with fountains, monuments and marble statues and, in addition to the cavernous Peterhof Palace, the buildings include a multitude of lesser palaces, chapels and pavilions. But Peterhof is perhaps best known for its fountains and of these the Grand Cascade in front of Peterhof Palace is in a class of its own.

The Palace stretches for 300 metres along the top of a high terrace facing the Gulf of Finland. From the marble terrace in front of its central façade the water of the Grand Cascade tumbles down the slope to the plain below. Powered by gravity flow from springs located nearly 24 kilometres away, its system of waterworks has remained unchanged since it was built in 1721. And the Grand Cascade is no simple waterfall. Its two parallel sets of terraced plunge pools are adorned with 64 fountains, 37 gilded bronze statues, and uncounted bas-reliefs. Many of the statues are of mythological figures while others are allegorical representations of Russian military prowess. In the oval pool at the bottom of the cascade a huge statue of Samson prying open the jaws of a lion was created to celebrate Peter’s victory over the Swedes in the 1709 battle of Poltava.

Before leaving Peterhof we descend one of the broad staircases that lead from the marble terrace down the side of the Grand Cascade, past the Samson statue, and into the lower park where Peter’s French and Italian fountains are surrounded by a huge expanse of lawns and formal gardens. From there we follow the canal that leads out to the Gulf of Finland, where Peter the Great put to shore in 1705 and decided this was a suitable spot to build his country retreat.

 

TSARSKOYE SELO

The first large scale residence on the Tsarskoye Selo estate was built by Peter the Great’s wife, Catherine I who later bequeathed it to her daughter Elizabeth. As soon as she became empress in 1741 Elizabeth, with the help of architect Francesco Rastrelli, transformed the original mansion into a magnificent palace that surpasses all of Russia’s other residences in size and splendor. Located in the town of Pushkin, 25 km south of St. Petersburg, Catherine Palace, named after Elizabeth’s mother, is the centerpiece of the 100-acre estate. Its elaborate, three-story Baroque façade, embellished with white columns and carved window frames set against a blue background, is an astonishing 740 metres long — almost a kilometre!

The inside of the palace is even more elegant than its elaborate façade and statue studded formal gardens. Its high-ceilinged galleries, hallways and staircases are adorned with elaborately carved bas-reliefs gilded with pure gold. Paintings and murals share wall space with ornately framed mirrors that reflect the glitter of huge cut-glass chandeliers and even the floors are works of art. The intricate patterns of inlayed maple, walnut, light and dark oak are masterpieces of craftsmanship, and the floor of every room is different. It’s difficult to say which of the scores of rooms is most impressive — the 850 square metre Great Hall where Elizabeth and later Catherine the Great threw their lavish balls, or the intimate Amber Room whose walls and furnishings are fashioned from intricately fitted pieces of amber that radiate a warm golden, inner light.

In one of the hallways I paused to look at a small framed photograph of the Great Hall that was taken by a front-line correspondent in 1944. There are no mirrors or paintings on its blackened walls and the shattered roof is just a pile of rubble in the middle of the floor.

 

THE TRAGEDY AMD TRIUMPH OF LENINGRAD

On Sept. 23, 1941, after a prolonged battle against German forces, the Russian defenders were driven out of Peterhof and Peter the Great’s “Russian Versailles” was occupied by the Nazis. Although the Germans never succeeded in breaking through the defenses of Leningrad itself, as St. Petersburg was then called, they occupied, looted, and trashed most of the surrounding suburban estates, including Catherine Palace. And it was not just the buildings that suffered. During the 900-day siege of Leningrad, one of the most horrific episodes in the annals of warfare, more than a million of its residents died, at least half of them from starvation. Yet the war had no sooner ended than the restoration began.

What we see today in Peterhof, in Catherine Palace, and in much of St. Petersburg itself is a tribute to the dedicated teams of restorers who continue to put the shattered pieces back together. By working from photographs and drawings, re-mastering the skills of the original craftsmen, and repatriating the many items that were hidden or evacuated during the war, they have rebuilt the once private estates of the elite and thrown them open to the world. Like the proverbial Phoenix the palaces of the czars, and in fact much of St. Petersburg itself, have risen from the ashes of war and are as splendid today as they ever were in the past.