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The history and the sightseeings of St.Petersburg Vocabulary Grammar structures Find, systematise and present information in English

Introduction History (video:Zayachy Island) Sightseeing: 1.Palace Square 2.The Hermitage 3.The Winter Palace 4. The Nevsky Prospect 5. St. Petersburg’s bridges (video) 6. The Summer Garden (video) 7. The Kazan Cathedral 8. St. Isaac’s Cathedral

Saint Petersburg (Russia) (Russian Sankt Peterburg), second largest city and largest seaport in Russia, located in the northwestern part of the country, at the head of the Gulf of Finland (an arm of the Baltic Sea). The capital of Russia for two centuries ( ), Saint Petersburg is one of the most beautiful cities in Europe, noted for its lavish palaces and grand cathedrals. It is also a major rail junction and an industrial, cultural, and scientific center. The city is located on both banks of the Neva River and on a number of river islands.

Saint Petersburg has been renamed three times since its founding. Construction of the city began in 1703, ordered by Russian tsar (later emperor) Peter the Great, who named it Saint Petersburg after his patron saint. After World War I broke out in 1914, the city's Germanic name was changed to Petrograd. In 1924, upon the death of Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin, its name was changed to Leningrad. Finally, in June 1991, six months before the USSR officially dissolved and Russia emerged as an independent country, the city reverted to its original name. Saint Petersburg’s climate is one of strong contrasts. It is affected by air masses coming off the Atlantic Ocean and by polar continental air, which in winter is very dry and cold. Saint Petersburg has cold winters, with temperatures in January averaging -10° C (14° F); the summers are generally cool, with the temperature in July averaging 17° C (63° F). Although the city’s harbor is frozen for three to four months of each year, icebreakers keep it open for much of the winter season.

The Saint Petersburg region was originally inhabited by Swedes. It was conquered by Russia during the Great Northern War ( ) fought between Sweden and a coalition of countries led by Russia. In 1703 Russian tsar Peter the Great chose a site on Zayachy Island in the Neva River and began the construction of the Peter and Paul Fortress, named after the two saints. Although the site was cold, damp, and poorly protected, Peter was determined to build a new capital in the Neva delta to replace Moscow, which had served as Russia’s capital since the origins of the Russian state in the 1300s. Peter wanted an outlet to the Baltic Sea and intended to make Saint Petersburg a modern, Western-style city that would serve as Russia's “window on Europe.” Although the fortress was originally a primitive earthen structure, stone was brought in when construction of the city began. Saint Petersburg was built at great human cost. Hunger and cold killed nearly 100,000 people during the first years of its construction. The imperial capital— including the Russian court, the Senate, and the foreign embassies—was moved to the new city in Peter and the rulers after him commissioned Dutch and Italian architects to build the city’s beautiful palaces, and an influx of Western scholars and artisans helped make Saint Petersburg a cultural as well as political center.

Saint Petersburg has witnessed some of the most dramatic political events in Russia’s history. In 1825 a group of Russian military officers called the Decembrists tried to instigate a rebellion in the city to prevent the accession to the throne of Nicholas I, favoring Nicholas’s brother Constantine instead. Five of the rebel leaders were hanged. In January 1905 a huge parade of demonstrators marched toward the city’s Winter Palace to voice their grievances with Emperor Nicholas II; the imperial guard responded by opening fire on the crowd. Nationwide outrage over the massacre, which became known as Bloody Sunday, turned into a full-scale, although ultimately unsuccessful, revolution against the monarchy (see Russian Revolution of 1905). Continued opposition to imperial rule led to the Russian Revolution of 1917, which began with a spontaneous uprising by workers and soldiers in the city (then known as Petrograd). The revolution culminated in a seizure of power by the Bolsheviks (later renamed the Communists) and the establishment of a new Soviet government headed by Vladimir Lenin. With World War I still underway, the Bolsheviks deemed Petrograd too vulnerable to German invasion to remain the Russian capital. They also considered the city too symbolically linked to imperial rule. Thus, the Bolsheviks made Moscow the capital of the new Soviet state. After Lenin’s death in 1924, Petrograd was renamed Leningrad in his honor.

From September 1941 to January 1944, during World War II, Leningrad was besieged by invading German troops, who blocked the supply of food and fuel to the city. Leningrad's only link to the rest of the country was across the frozen waters of Lake Lagoda or by air. About 1 million people are believed to have died as a result of disease, starvation, and bombings, and more than 10,000 buildings were destroyed or damaged. After the war, Soviet authorities undertook to rebuild the city and restore important buildings and palaces, an expensive project that has continued since the Soviet Union collapsed and the new government of independent Russia took power in The end of Communism led to the creation of multiple political parties in Saint Petersburg—as elsewhere in Russia—and the establishment of a democratic city government.

It is the heart of St. Petersburg, where the Winter Palace, the General Staff building, the building of the Ministries and 155 foot-tall Alexander Column are situated. The Winter Palace served as the tsarist residence which building nowadays belongs to the State Hermitage – the largest artistic, historical and cultural museum.

It is the palace in St. Petersburg that was built and designed by the famous architect Bartolomeo Rastrelli in Before 1917 it was one of the residences of the Russian tsarist family. Now it is one of the buildings of the world famous museum the Hermitage.

It is the largest art museum in Russia and is famous throughout the world. It is the second largest art museum in the world after the Louvre in Paris. It was founded as a private collection of Empress Catherine II in 1764 and was opened for the public in Now the museum has several buildings, one of them is the Winter Palace.

The Nevsky Prospect is the main avenue of St. Petersburg. It is the center of business and trade activities and cultural life of the city, a prime place for shopping, entertainment and nightlife.

There are hundreds of bridges in St.Petersburg. They all are different and yet alike in something. There are long and short bridges, wide and narrow bridges, stone and wooden bridges, bridges across the broad Neva, the still canals, the Fontanka and the Moika.The bridges make an organic part of St.Petersburg which cannot be pictured without them. The first bridge over the Neva was built in 1727 to connect the Admiralty and the Vassilyevsky Island. The first bridge to appear was the Nikolayevsky Bridge. The longest bridge is the Alexander Nevsky bridge.

It is the oldest garden in St.Petersburg, existing since It has an area of 11 hectares. The planning was done by Peter the Great himself who wanted to have a better garden than the French king had in Versailles. There you can find marble statues, a “Coffee House”, a “Tea House”, a bronze monument to the great Russian fabulist Ivan Krylov and a lot of other interesting things. The Summer Garden is kept in good repair and is one of favourite places for residents of St.Petersburg and its tourists.

The Kazan Cathedral encircles a small square with a double row of beautiful columns- an impressive colonade. It is devoted to the Holy Virgin of Kazan (Казанская Божья Матерь). The architect Andrew Voronikhin built this church in The Kazan Cathedral was thought to become the main church of Russia.

It is the biggest Orthodox cathedral in St. Petersburg that was built in honour of St. Isaac of Dalmatia (Святого Исаакия Далматского) because on St. Isaac’s day Peter the Great was born. The cathedral was designed and built by the architect A. Motferrand (Огюст Монферран) in

1.Диск “Интерактивный мир”. Искусство и путешествия. Мультимедийная коллекция, том №1. 2.Диск “Санкт-Петербург. 300 лет”. 3.Диск “Encarta Encyclopedia, 2005”.