Peter's Little Summer Place July 28, 2006

I believe I may have mentioned in yesterday’s log that the Russian royalty knew how to spend money. I have now verified this as fact. Today we visited the Summer Palace which is located in the town of Peterhof which is a short 40 minute drive from downtown St. Petersburg.

If you are in the market for a get-a-way place, something nice and cozy that’s on the water, I wish I could tell you that I found it for you. The problem is this is a UNESCO site and unfortunately is not for sale. But, if you happen to have 50 acres or so, on the water you may consider copying this layout.

Peter the Great built his Summer Palace at the same time he was starting construction on St. Petersburg and his townhouse (Winter Palace) there. The Summer Palace was modeled after the Palace of Versailles, not an exact copy mind you, but with a large main palace (read this as huge), an almost equally sized guest cottage, numerous support buildings, elaborate gardens and you can’t throw a rock without hitting a fountain on these grounds. All of this for one month a year. The man also had a sense of humor. Julia told us today that PtG had “joke fountains” installed in the gardens. He would invite visiting ladies to walk in the gardens before dinner and minutes before the meal was to start a servant would turn on hidden fountains that would spray benches and pathways where the ladies were residing. Dinner would then be served on time and you did not want to be late. There were many a meal served with ladies in wet dresses, droopy and dripping powdered wigs and runny make-up. You gotta love a monarch that would do that. Now a days these fountains are turned on every hour and whoever is in the way gets a small taste of what it was like to be visiting Peter the Great.

The Summer Palace like all of the imperial Palaces was taken over by each succeeding sovereign and changed to suit their taste. From what we learned Catherine the Great had the largest influence after Peter, but during the restoration after WWII it may have been that PtG and CtG were highlighted as they are seen as the best of the Russian aristocracy.

The Siege of Leningrad (St. Petersburg) raged through this part of the countryside and the palace was severely damaged. Restorations were made using the building techniques of the early 18th century when the palace was built including weaving wall coverings on period machines. They have done a great job and it was inspiring to walk through the grounds. As a note the fountains were operative in the 18th century. This was done with out any mechanical pumps by building ponds at a higher level (some of these are a mile or more away) and using wooden pipes to move gravity forced water to the fountains. We were also told they used small children to clean out the wooden pipes. The wood was replaced with metal sometime in the 19th century.

We left the palace and on a whim took the ferry to Kronshtadt which is a naval base and was started by, you know who I’m going to say, Peter the Great during the same period when he was building everything else in this part of Russia. You have to hand it to PtG, the man had a very detailed vision. The ferry also looked like it was built by PtG and must have made the three nautical mile trip back and forth from Peterhof and Kronstadt a million times or so. George, our driver for the day, bravely drove the car unto the dented, rusted ramp and we bravely rode with him. The car secured we climbed to the upper deck as this would be a much better place if we needed to get off the boat quickly. The old ferry made the crossing without incident though and with the sun shining and the Gulf of Finland barely rippled by the cool breeze that was blowing we enjoyed it immensely.

We drove off the ferry and into an all but deserted and forgotten town that at one time must have been a bustling ship building yard and naval port. There are about 15,000 people that live here today and it looks like the town could have hosted five times that many in its heyday. The navy is still here but it is less than inspiring as the few ships that were docked are older and look the worse for wear. The navy personnel stay in barracks that blend in with the civilian housing and appear to have been built in the 19th century. The highlight of this side trip was when George obtained a map of the town, and as I had mentioned that I would like to see the old dry docks, he led us right to them. This was no little feat because we maneuvered through dilapidated apartment blocks and down a weed choked path to find them. The dry docks are still impressive when one considers when they were built. Now the massive iron flood gates have rusted away and weeds grow where the keels of many a ship were laid. The other site worth mentioning is the Cathedral of the Sea. This is a massive cathedral that is a copy of one of the main cathedrals that was in Constantinople. It serviced all of the navy personnel and is adorned with nautical paraphernalia on its exterior.

Our brief tour of Kronshtadt completed we piled back into the car and made our way back to St. Pete across a damn that has been under construction for over 40 years. The work stops periodically because of a lack of funding.

Back is St. Pete we relaxed with a much deserved pizza in a place called Mr. Potito. A small basement café that is dark enough to make you want to turn around and leave but I’m glad we didn’t because the pizza was the best I have had in a while.