A dazzling visual feast at every turn
Taking to the river is a great way to get a good snapshot of the world’s biggest country, writes Sally Macmillan.
Like many other first-time visitors, I’d always thought Moscow’s Red Square’s name had something to do with the Bolsheviks. But that’s not the case. The colour red is significant in Russian culture, not in the ‘‘reds under the beds’’ sense but because the Russian word for red, krasnyi, is related to the word for beautiful.
I learn this and much more while looking around a 19th-century house on Kizhi Island, one of a collection of historic wooden buildings that make up an unusual open-air museum in the middle of Lake Onega. Our guide shows us the ‘‘red corner’’ in the farmhouse, dedicated to the householders’ favourite religious icon, and says they still feature in many modern Russian homes.
Kizhi Island’s most photographed building is the Church of the Transfiguration, constructed in 1714 from pine logs without a single nail, and featuring 22 domes.
Even though temporary scaffolding surrounds its upper levels when we visit on a misty autumn morning, the church looks like something out of a fairy tale.
The deceptively simple architecture contrasts starkly with the extravagant palaces and monuments of St Petersburg and Moscow, the two cities that bookend our 13-day river journey.
St Petersburg is a dazzling visual feast. We have three days of intense sightseeing to take in the most important cultural landmarks, and even then we still have some tough calls to make.
A half-day boat trip along the network of canals and rivers is a wonderful introduction to the city’s golden-domed churches, waterfront parks, sumptuous mansions, and ornate palaces.
A tour of the spectacular Winter Palace, part of the Hermitage Museum complex, is top of the list.
It houses one of the world’s biggest collections of art and antiquities, as well as a sizeable population of cats who are as integral to the palace’s history as the priceless artworks.
Catherine Palace, a lavish confection about 30 kilometres south of the city, is another eyeopening monument to the excessive lifestyle of the Romanov dynasty. Other musts include Peterhof Palace, the Church of the Saviour on Spilled Blood, Peter and Paul Fortress, the Faberge Museum and, if you’ve booked ahead, a ballet or opera at the Mariinsky Theatre.
We take off from St Petersburg and spend the next five days travelling along hundreds of kilometres of rivers, across the vast Ladoga and Onega lakes, and into the Volga-Baltic Waterway that leads into Moscow.
At Mandrogy, a reconstructed traditional village on the banks of the Svir River, a group of