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