Its officially the first day of spring! We can actually tell, because it is much warmer. The sad part of this story is that we are still in the negatives, but I swear, its pretty warm here. So I've been a little slow about posting, but I also dont want to do one long post about all the events I've been doing for the past week so I'm limiting this post to Menshikov's palace. I'll do the rest on another post.
As some of you know, I am taking a course about the culture and history of St. Petersburg. Since we have the rare opportunity to actually be in the city we are studying, we get to go on excursions every couple of classes. Our first one was to Menshikov's palace, which is supposedly not open to the public, which is pretty cool. I paid for a photo pass, so I went a little crazy with the pictures. Here are just a few:
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| A group of us from the St. Petersburg class |
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| A very cool-looking desk inside Menshikov's palace |
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| There were several rooms that were completely made of porcelain, even the ceilings! |
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| As Sam said, "to prove that we were actually here!" |
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| A really awesome seashell cup that Menshikov used to drink out of. It was supposedly his favorite |
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| Russian ceilings are absolutely incredible.We spend most of our tours looking up. |
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| Again, beautiful ceilings |
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| Our view on the way back home after the museum. Leaving St. Petersburg is going to be so hard |
absolutely incredible! the ceiling one was amazing but the last picture's definitely my favorite :-)
ReplyDeleteFrom a nerditecture point, ceilings are the thing I love most about pre-modern architecture. They're purely decorative most of the time since they're just the underside of the roof, which with the walls and the floor are actually necessary for shelter; the ceiling is just there to look nice. There's such a potential to enhance a space with a ceiling that's you hardly see today. People are all into celebrating the mechanics of a building and essentially breaking it down to its bare bones now cause of the whole green movement that there's really no place for fancy decoration anymore. It really takes away from the charming personality of buildings that Americans love so much about foreign countries; all the little details that we'll never really have here. Especially in AZ... Where I live... :(
ReplyDeleteRoger Ebert puts it in better words than I do:
http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2010/07/post_1.html
Lol it's something to think about when you're looking at buildings :)
Haha I love you Talisa. I'll definitely think about it while I'm looking at buildings.
ReplyDelete