191. Grand Maket Museum
The Grand Maket Museum is one of the most popular museums in St. Petersburg, even though it is relatively new (it opened in 2012) as compared with the better-known eighteenth-century institutions in the city, and is located way outside of the city center. It is a short walk east of Moskovsky Prospekt, near the Moscow Triumphal Gate. This was a great place to spend a cold winter afternoon in early December.
I've never been especially excited by model villages or trains, but the setup here is amazing! At 8,600 square feet, this 1:87 scale model is one of the largest in the world. Every region of Russia is represented, with pastoral landscapes, historic landmarks, neighborhoods and commercial buildings, and numerous scenes from everyday life. A variety of vehicles are in continuous motion throughout the model: cars, trucks, buses, and "over 2.5 km of rail, 452 switch boxes, 250 locomotives (10 special cleaning trains) and a one-meter height difference achieved using more than 50 meters of spiral lifts." The vehicles on the roadways do not appear to be on a track and do not have a visible power supply, so it is especially impressive when they stop at traffic signals, turn on side streets, or respond to traffic accidents and forest fires.
The lights throughout the museum cycle to "night mode" every 13 minutes, and the entire model is lit by more than half a million bulbs (in both the vehicles and the buildings). I walked around the model twice (long enough to see four or five day/night cycles), noticing different details each time. I enjoyed watching the museum staff build new models (in the workshop) and repair malfunctioning items in the main display. It would take an entire afternoon to see everything, and the couple of hours I spent there were not quite enough to take in the entire model.
Highlights in the model layout include the scale model of the museum itself (how meta!), the St. Petersburg section (with the Scarlet Sails tall ship sailing past the Peter and Paul Fortress), the parade ground with 1,820 soldiers standing in formation, a field of sunflowers with 39,260 individual flowers, a winter scene with a herd of 172 deer, a political protest, and a forest fire (complete with real smoke) being extinguished by fire engines. However, my single favorite detail was finding a shirtless Vladimir Putin riding a grizzly bear. I thought that this meme was just an American fixation, but apparently it is is also quite popular in Russia.
Even though this museum is clearly most popular with families, children, and school groups, I highly recommend it for anyone interested in the natural or cultural landscape of the world's largest country.
I've never been especially excited by model villages or trains, but the setup here is amazing! At 8,600 square feet, this 1:87 scale model is one of the largest in the world. Every region of Russia is represented, with pastoral landscapes, historic landmarks, neighborhoods and commercial buildings, and numerous scenes from everyday life. A variety of vehicles are in continuous motion throughout the model: cars, trucks, buses, and "over 2.5 km of rail, 452 switch boxes, 250 locomotives (10 special cleaning trains) and a one-meter height difference achieved using more than 50 meters of spiral lifts." The vehicles on the roadways do not appear to be on a track and do not have a visible power supply, so it is especially impressive when they stop at traffic signals, turn on side streets, or respond to traffic accidents and forest fires.
The lights throughout the museum cycle to "night mode" every 13 minutes, and the entire model is lit by more than half a million bulbs (in both the vehicles and the buildings). I walked around the model twice (long enough to see four or five day/night cycles), noticing different details each time. I enjoyed watching the museum staff build new models (in the workshop) and repair malfunctioning items in the main display. It would take an entire afternoon to see everything, and the couple of hours I spent there were not quite enough to take in the entire model.
Highlights in the model layout include the scale model of the museum itself (how meta!), the St. Petersburg section (with the Scarlet Sails tall ship sailing past the Peter and Paul Fortress), the parade ground with 1,820 soldiers standing in formation, a field of sunflowers with 39,260 individual flowers, a winter scene with a herd of 172 deer, a political protest, and a forest fire (complete with real smoke) being extinguished by fire engines. However, my single favorite detail was finding a shirtless Vladimir Putin riding a grizzly bear. I thought that this meme was just an American fixation, but apparently it is is also quite popular in Russia.
Even though this museum is clearly most popular with families, children, and school groups, I highly recommend it for anyone interested in the natural or cultural landscape of the world's largest country.
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