St. Isaac's Cathedral, St. Petersburg, Russia

St. Isaac's Cathedral was originally the city's main church and the largest cathedral in Russia. It was built between 1818 and 1858, by the French-born architect Auguste Montferrand, to be one of the most impressive landmarks of the Russian Imperial capital. One hundred and eighty years later the gilded dome of St. Isaac's still dominates the skyline of St. Petersburg.

The cathedral's facades are decorated with sculptures and massive granite columns (made of single pieces of red granite), while the interior is adorned with incredibly detailed mosaic icons, paintings and columns made of malachite and lapis lazuli. A large, brightly colored stained glass window of the "Resurrected Christ" takes pride of place inside the main altar. The church, designed to accommodate 14,000 standing worshipers, was closed in the early 1930s by the communist soviet government. Under the Soviet government, the building was stripped of religious trappings and reopened as a museum. Today, church services are held here only on major ecclesiastical occasions.

Beautiful Mosaic

Heavenly Dome

Mikhailovskiy Palace, State Russian Museum

Mikhailovsky Palace

The State Russian Museum (formerly the Russian Museum of His Imperial Majesty Alexander III) is the largest depository of Russian fine art in Saint Petersburg.

The museum was established on April 13, 1895, upon enthronement of Nicholas II to commemorate his father, Alexander III. Its original collection was composed of artworks taken from the Hermitage Museum, Alexander Palace, and the Imperial Academy of Arts. After the Russian Revolution of 1917, many private collections were nationalized and relocated to the Russian Museum.

The main building of the museum is the Mikhailovsky Palace, a splendid Neoclassical residence of Grand Duke Michael Pavlovich, erected in 1819-25 to a design by Carlo Rossi on Square of Arts in St Petersburg.

My favorite part of the museum was its collection of iterate artists (Peredvizhniki). In 1863 a group of fourteen students decided to leave The Imperial Academy of Arts. The students found the rules of the Academy constraining; the teachers were conservative and there was a strict separation between high and low art. In an effort to bring art to the people, the students formed an independent artistic society; The Petersburg Cooperative of Artists (Artel). In 1870, this organization was largely succeeded by the Association of Traveling Art Exhibits (Peredvizhniki) to give a chance to people from provinces to follow the achievements of Russian Art, and to teach people to appreciate art. The society maintained independence from state support and brought the art, which illustrated the contemporary life of the people from Moscow and Saint Petersburg, to provinces.

From 1871 to 1923, the society arranged 48 mobile exhibitions in St. Petersburg and Moscow, after which they were shown in Kiev, Kharkov, Kazan, Oryol, Riga,Odessa and other cities.

Peredvizhniki were influenced by the public views of the literary critics Vissarion Belinsky and Nikolai Chernyshevsky. Belinsky thought that literature and art should attribute a social and moral responsibility. Like most Slavophiles, Chernyshevsky ardently supported the emancipation of serfs, which was finally realized in the reform of 1861. He viewed press censorship, serfdom, and capital punishment as Western influences. Because of his political activism, officials prohibited publication of any of his writing, including his dissertation; but it eventually found its way to the artworld of nineteenth-century Russia. In 1863, almost immediately after the emancipation of serfs, Chernyshevsky’s goals were realized with the help of Peredvizhniki, who took the pervasive Slavophile-populist idea that Russia had a distinguishable, modest, inner beauty of its own and worked out how to display it on canvas.

Peredvizhniki portrayed the many-sided aspects of social life, often critical of inequities and injustices. But their art showed not only poverty but also the beauty of the folk way of life; not only suffering but also fortitude and strength of characters. Peredvizhniki condemned the Russian aristocratic orders and autocratic government in their humanistic art. They portrayed the emancipation movement of Russian people with empathy (The Arrest of Propagandist; Refuse from Confession; Not Expected by Ilya Yefimovich Repin).

Barge Haulers on the Volga by Ilya Repin

Portrait of Artist Ivan Shishkin by Ivan Kramskoy

The Taking of a Snow Fortress by Vasily Surokov

Tolstoy by Ilya Repin

Sadko in the Underwater Kingdom, Ilya Repin

Boat to St. Petersburg, Russia

We took the boat overnight to St. Petersburg, Russia.  I have never seen so much herring before.  They must have had at least herring 40 different ways.

Neva River, St. Petersburg

Neptune's Trident and Sea Horses on Bridge

Neo-classic Architecture

Saint George and the Dragon

Kalevalakoru and Fazer

We visited Kalevalakoru which makes jewelry out of gold, silver and bronze with motifs from the iron age and Viking era, then stopped by Fazer confectionary shop. We were introduced to Finnish licorice which is rather unique.  Salty licorice, also known as salmiakki or salmiak, is a variety of licorice flavoured with ammonium chloride, common in the Nordic countries, Netherlands, Baltic States and Northern Germany. Ammonium chloride gives salty licorice an astringent, salty taste (hence the name), which has been described as "tongue-numbing" and "almost-stinging." Salty licoorice is an acquired taste and people not familiar with ammonium chloride might find the taste physically overwhelming and unlikeable.

There was a licorice-flavored icecream bar that wasn't too bad - otherwise it was quite overwhelming to me.

Finland's National Archives, Helsinki

128 shelf kilometers (79 miles) of archived material from 1316 and after.

Finnish National Archives

Design Museum, Helsinki

Our guided tour of the museum focused on Finnish Textiles and weaving tradition.

Design Museum is a museum in Helsinki devoted to the exhibition of both Finnish and foreign design, including industrial design, fashion, and graphic design. The museum, which is 140 years old, was first founded in 1873 but has operated in its present premises, a former school, designed by architect Gustaf Nyström in 1894 in the neo-Gothic style, since 1978.

The museum includes a permanent exhibition devoted to the history of Finnish design from 1870 to the present day, as well as space for changing exhibitions. The museum's permanent collection consists of over 75,000 objects, 40,000 drawings and 100,000 drawings.

Ateneum, Helsinki

Ateneum is an art museum in Helsinki, Finland and one of the museums of the Finnish National Gallery. It is located in the centre of Helsinki at the Rautatientori square opposite Helsinki Central railway station. It has the biggest collections of classical art in Finland. Previously the Ateneum building also housed the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts and University of Art and Design Helsinki.

The collections of Ateneum include extensively Finnish art all the way from 18th-century rococo portraiture to the experimental art movements of the 20th century. The collections also include some 650 international works of art.