60. Rumyantsev Mansion & the Museum of the History of St. Petersburg
The Rumyantsev Mansion is a beautiful home that straddles the line between fancy house, palace, and museum. It is situated in a highly visible location for many tourists who visit St. Petersburg: it's along the Neva River on the English Embankment, facing one of the cruise ship docks. However, I don't think most people in the city on a two- or three-day Baltic cruise stop would visit here instead of the more well-known destinations. When I was there, a massive cruise ship was parked right out front but hardly a soul was inside.
The building features three distinct sections (the latter two of which are part of the Museum of the History of St. Petersburg):
1) The "palace", which includes the grand staircase, mahogany staircase, and several fancy state rooms (basically, equivalent to palace rooms at other institutions around town), plus a brief exhibit about the owners of the mansion during the 19th century. Certainly the monumental facade of the building gives the impression of a palace - more so even than the exterior of other more traditional palaces such as the Shuvalov Palace or Sheremetev Palace. The highlight here was the grand staircase, almost the equal of the entrance staircase at the Yusupov Palace. I was also impressed by a huge mirror made from a single piece of glass that occupied the entire wall of one of the rooms.
2) A museum, dedicated to the Siege of Leningrad during the Great Patriotic War. A Russian-language exhibit on the second floor is spread through 12 rooms, and tells the story from beginning to end of the Nazi invasion and siege.
One of the rooms features two videos, which I watched in their entirety. The first was 20 minutes long and the second seven minutes, and each juxtaposes contemporary scenes of St. Petersburg with photos taken during the siege of Leningrad from the exact same spot. When I say exact, I mean identical: whoever created the modern set of photographs went to extreme effort to match up the position, angle, and field of view so that the images transition seamlessly from the new to the old. It was amazing to see the death, destruction, and suffering in places around the city that I now know so well, but there were many images of survival and resiliency, too. It was also sobering to see in a nearby display case the dozens(!) of thick volumes that list the names of all the people who died in Leningrad during the Great Patriotic War.
Overall, I probably learned a bit more about the wartime experience of St. Petersburg at the Museum of the Defense and Siege of Leningrad. That museum offered an English-language audio guide and told a more straightforward narrative. Nevertheless, this exhibit was well done and contained many amazing artifacts. A few kindly guards/docents spent around 10 minutes each teaching me about the history depicted in the exhibits, almost entirely in Russian. I understood some of what they said, so my communication skills must be improving.
3) A second museum exhibit on the third floor of the museum focuses on life in Leningrad during the early 20th century. Dioramas show typical apartments or workshops of the time, clothing displays review the popular fashions, and various paintings and drawings represent the state of art that was consumed and appreciated by the masses. I found it a bit more challenging to connect with some of these displays on an emotional or intellectual level, so spent less time in this area. The ground floor also includes a room with a fancy timeline display showing different milestones throughout the city's history, with a particular emphasis on the 18th and 19th centuries.
I enjoyed my visit to the Rumyantsev Mansion: it has a little bit of everything, even for people who aren't fluent in Russian.
The building features three distinct sections (the latter two of which are part of the Museum of the History of St. Petersburg):
1) The "palace", which includes the grand staircase, mahogany staircase, and several fancy state rooms (basically, equivalent to palace rooms at other institutions around town), plus a brief exhibit about the owners of the mansion during the 19th century. Certainly the monumental facade of the building gives the impression of a palace - more so even than the exterior of other more traditional palaces such as the Shuvalov Palace or Sheremetev Palace. The highlight here was the grand staircase, almost the equal of the entrance staircase at the Yusupov Palace. I was also impressed by a huge mirror made from a single piece of glass that occupied the entire wall of one of the rooms.
2) A museum, dedicated to the Siege of Leningrad during the Great Patriotic War. A Russian-language exhibit on the second floor is spread through 12 rooms, and tells the story from beginning to end of the Nazi invasion and siege.
One of the rooms features two videos, which I watched in their entirety. The first was 20 minutes long and the second seven minutes, and each juxtaposes contemporary scenes of St. Petersburg with photos taken during the siege of Leningrad from the exact same spot. When I say exact, I mean identical: whoever created the modern set of photographs went to extreme effort to match up the position, angle, and field of view so that the images transition seamlessly from the new to the old. It was amazing to see the death, destruction, and suffering in places around the city that I now know so well, but there were many images of survival and resiliency, too. It was also sobering to see in a nearby display case the dozens(!) of thick volumes that list the names of all the people who died in Leningrad during the Great Patriotic War.
Overall, I probably learned a bit more about the wartime experience of St. Petersburg at the Museum of the Defense and Siege of Leningrad. That museum offered an English-language audio guide and told a more straightforward narrative. Nevertheless, this exhibit was well done and contained many amazing artifacts. A few kindly guards/docents spent around 10 minutes each teaching me about the history depicted in the exhibits, almost entirely in Russian. I understood some of what they said, so my communication skills must be improving.
3) A second museum exhibit on the third floor of the museum focuses on life in Leningrad during the early 20th century. Dioramas show typical apartments or workshops of the time, clothing displays review the popular fashions, and various paintings and drawings represent the state of art that was consumed and appreciated by the masses. I found it a bit more challenging to connect with some of these displays on an emotional or intellectual level, so spent less time in this area. The ground floor also includes a room with a fancy timeline display showing different milestones throughout the city's history, with a particular emphasis on the 18th and 19th centuries.
I enjoyed my visit to the Rumyantsev Mansion: it has a little bit of everything, even for people who aren't fluent in Russian.
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