Санкт-Петербург

Dear Kate Cary,

My name is Alain. I am 13 years old. I study in 7 classes. There are four members in my family: my mum, my dad, my little brother and I.

As I like to travel, I dream to visit the Great Britain very much.

I want to invite you to visit one of the most interesting cities of Russia - St. Petersburg.

Petersburg is a great city.  The great Russian tsars ruled for two years there and during that time Russia was a real empire. It is a city of enormous cathedrals, the greatest museum in the world, hundreds of the most beautiful bridges and canals. Not in one city in the world there are so many old buildings. More than eighteen thousand houses were built before the revolution. Also there are seventy theaters, two hundred museums and eight and a half thousand historical monuments - City of Stone, the city museum, the town hero, legend city.

The main street is called Nevsky Prospect. Focused on this area the most beautiful buildings of St.  Petersburg - Hermitage, Isakovsky Cathedral, Alexander Column and central headquarters, whose facade is the longest of all the facades in the world.

Hermitage - one of the greatest museums in the world. It holds about three million works of art. Earlier it was the Winter Palace, the gates of which the Bolsheviks stormed, well, now the building of the Hermitage and the gates storm tourists every day. Hermitage is a giant museum. You have no idea how big it is. Even if you jog, it is impossible for the entire day to run all exhibition halls and each room is literally “stuffed” works of art. Here are stored masterpieces by Rembrandt and Matisse, Rubens and Van Gogh, Michelangelo and of course the work of the Leonardo da Vinci. Also priceless paintings, furniture and tapestries there are clocks, statues, jewelry, gold and royal chambers cocks.

In Soviet times, it was very popular to organize concerts in apartments. There were musical teams who wrote protest songs, and the authorities forbade them to speak in a variety platforms. Then they gathered in private homes, where concerts were performed. This tradition continues today. The audience for such activities comes specific. For many of them, such concerts - a tradition for several generations. By the end of the concert it becomes clear that “kvartirnik” lost their spirit of rebellion and underground charm. Today, the entry needs to pay money for the purchase of CDs and have to pay money after also have to pay money.

The most famous and popular theater of St. Petersburg - Mariinsky Theatre. There come to touch high, see operas and ballets.

The main attraction of St. Petersburg is,of course, the famous “white nights”. Every June and July, hundreds of thousands of tourists come to admire at night, during which the street is light. The most annoying is that the “white nights” are not real. After eleven o'clock the sun sets and it becomes almost dark.

St. Petersburg begins to build a fortress. Three hundred years ago, the great King Peter I laid here coastal fortress against the Swedes and turned the citadel in the form of a six-pointed star. Peter began to rebuild the city of their dreams, unlike traditional Russian city. As conceived by the king the city had to absorb all the best that could have been taken from the west and make it one of the most beautiful in the world. So, Peter wanted to "open a window" in Europe.

It is believed that the best St. Petersburg can be treated with pleasure boats, because it opens with the maximum water views of the city.

Before Peter began to build here his great city, that was a real Swedish wilderness. Moreover, there were impassable swamps or bogs was not, and just flowed Neva. That is almost the entire central part of St. Petersburg including the Hermitage and Palace Square is built on artificial mounds. One can only imagine what it was hellish work with technologies from three years ago.

No wonder, St. Petersburg also called Venice of the North. Today the city as much as ninety rivers, streams, channels and canals. With a break in a hundred years here and enjoyed walking Dostoevsky, Viktor Tsoi. St. Petersburg authorities wanted to ban in the historic center of the city to walk in shorts and flip-flops, which would not destroy the atmosphere of this place.

The culmination of a night walk in St. Petersburg is the bridges. Bridges in the city and low for what would be the big ships could enter the port every night bred bridges, and water is going to a flotilla of boats.

Be sure to visit this loveliest city that would see all this beauty with my own eyes.

I hope, you will visit us and see all the sights.

Best wishes,

Alena Eremina.