St.Petersburg many years ago

Please spend a few minutes to look at these pictures.

Amazing aren't they? Just imagine: it is the same St.Petersburg that we can see and enjoy now, but you may find some differences that have appeared during the last 130-150 years. Can you see them?

Do you recognize the Hermitage, St. Isaacs Cathedral, Nevsky Prospect? Look at the Bronze Horseman, Kazan Cathedral, Nicholas Palace, embankments, churches. Look at these people on the streets who live and breathe rushing for business, for their families or impatiently waiting for the solemn procession. They laugh and cry, hope and give up, love and lose... exactly as we do now.

Then what is the difference? From one point of view there are many: we drive cars ,while they rode horses; we use electricity while they used candles; we use the internet and they read newspapers, and so on. For them the bloody revolution of 1917 (which mixed up muck and diamonds) is in the future; for us it's in the past( but we still can't separate the components of that mixture).

From another point of view these differences do not mean more than a typical vanity with some elements of the technical progress. From my perspective there is no difference, except some very interesting views of the great sights, most of which by now out lived many wars and revolutions, tsars and communists, monarchy's and socialists and will definitely out live the present pseudo democracy to say nothing of its leaders.

Enjoy the pictures:

200 Anniversary of Peter The Great, 30 May, 1872

Alexander Nevsky Monastery, 1870

Amur and Psiheya, Summer Garden, 1870

Anichkov Bridge, 1880

Anichkov Palace, 1950

Booths during the Yule week in the Admiralty Park, 1860

Circus, 1885

English Embankment, 1860

English Embankment, Nicholas Bridge, 1880

Ginzburg's house

Grand Duchess Elena Pavlovna's Palace, 1850

Greek Church, 1850

Holland Church on Nevsky, 1856

Kazan Cathedral, 1870

Konngvardeysky Boulevard, 1870

Liteyny Bridge construction 19 Feb, 1879

Liteyny Bridge construction, July 1, 1878

Narva Triumphal Arch, 1856

Nicholas Bridge, 1860

Nicholas Bridge,1880

Nicholas Palace, 1850

Palace Embankment

Palace Sguare, 1860

Ponteleymonovsky Bridge, 1885

Preobrazhensky Cathedral, 1856

Smolny Monastery, 1880

St.Isaac's Cathedral, 1859

St.Issac's Cathedral, 1870

Summer Garden, 1860

Summer Garden, 1872

The Admiralty, 1880

The Alexandrinsky Theater, 1856

The Bronze Horseman, 1857

The dome of St. Isaac's Cathedral, 1859

The Fontanka River, Staro-Kalinkin Bridge, 1880

The Neva River, 1870

The Neva River, Trinity Bridge, 1880

The opening ceremony of the monument in front of the Trinity Cathedral, 1886

The panoramic view of St.Peresburg, 1874

The Parade on Admiralty Square

The procession on Nevsky pr, 1883

The Procession on Nevsky pr, the transportation of regalia from Moscow to St.Petersburg, 1883

The transportation of regalia( on the way from Peter and Paul Fortress to the Bronze Horseman)

The Winter Palace (the view from Vasilievsky Island) 1850

The Winter Palace, 1850

Trinity Cathedral, 1857

Vladimiskaya Church, 1880