Wandering Camera - Notes about St.Petersburg and it's suburbs

Wandering Camera

Album 389
(Translated by Grif)

This time I decided to split traditional seasonal album to daytime and night-time parts. Here is the first one.

On this spot in 18th century (starting 1727) was a floating St. Isaak's bridge. It consisted of board layer on top of boats (later - barges). To let ships to pass it could separate at the middle. Bridge was named for St.Isaak's church on the other bank of Neva, where now St.Isaak Cathedral is standing.

They built 11 such bridges altogether (and only during the warm seasons - on winter the frozen river was crossed by ice-roads). But St.Isaak's bridge was the first, created by the order of St.Petersburg's Governor A.D. Menshikov. No wonder the bridge is close to his palace on Vasilievsky Island.

In various shapes the bridge lasted very long time, only slightly changing the location. In 1916 it burned in a fire started by a spark from the passing tugboat. So they had to open in a hurry the Palace bridge, yet unfinished.

Directly across the river is St'Isaak Cathedral.

The Old Stock Exchange (Bourse) building on the spit of Vasilievsky Island. View from the rear.

Despite the recent reconstruction and repairs the paint is peeling off the sculptures.

In front of Bourse.

Right ahead is Palace Bridge and Winter Palace. The Rostrum column is on the left.

Neva between Troitsky (Trinity) and Liteiny bridges.

The recently built skyscraper "Aurora" (I had already posted one photo, but this shows more details).

In my opinion, the permission to build this building of such height and visibility in historical center is sort of a signal to developers that all restrictions are thrown away. Gazprom-city and alike are only the result of that.

In the background, behind the hotel "St.Petersburg" you can see the next skyscraper under construction (expected to be twice as high): "Montblanc".