There are places in the tourist destination cities that catch your eyes, and even though they are not tourist attractions, you still want to learn about them because of their striking picture. Most tourist favorite cities in the world, especially those that have loads of attractions inside them, have that places, such as a simple office block, which because of its unique architecture, you may think it’s a tourist attraction; that’s why you need to learn about some facts about your destination before you begin your journey because sometimes, tour leaders won’t have anything to say about some features of the city since they’re not supposed to be a tourist attraction.
Russia is one of the favorite destinations for people who want to travel abroad because of the number of attractions inside its top cities. Moscow, as the capital of the country, is one of the busiest cities in Russia and millions of tourists are visiting that city annually, same as St. Petersburg. Moscow and St. Petersburg have hundreds of tourist attractions, well-known and less-known alike, which cause millions of tourists to travel to Russia every year. These two cities also have various places that look to be a tourist attraction, but they’re just regular buildings with striking designs.
While it’s not necessary to know those sort of things, including the name and history of every building that you encounter during your tour to Russia, it will help you enjoy your Russia tour more than not knowing it; for example, imagine that at some point during your Russia tour, you would pass a beautiful building that nobody knows about and they want to learn about it, but your tour leader doesn’t know a thing about that place either because it’s not a tourist attraction, that’s when reading blogs about your travel destination would help you.
St. Petersburg is one of those cities that you will experience a high dosage of tourist attractions and attractive places; it has more than enough tourist spots that you need more than one trip to Russia to explore them all. It also has several places that look like tourist attractions, especially in the historic center of the city, where everything you see looks like a place that you need to tour. One of those places is the Church of St. Simeon and Anna, which you will notice at one point of your St. Petersburg tour during your travel to Russia, whether when you’re exploring the city on foot, or when you pass by it on your cruise tour on the Fontanka River, particularly because of its far-fetched bell-tower.
The Church of St. Simeon and Anna was first built as a wooden church in St. Petersburg to celebrate the birth of Peter the Great’s daughter Anna Ivanova in 1714. She believed that St. Anna was her patron, and because of that, she planned to replace the wooden church with a stone one, when she came to the throne in 1730. She had assigned Mikhail Zemtsov for the task, who was one of the first Russian home-grown architecture of the time. Zemtsov was taught by Swiss Italian architect Domenico Trezzini, who had constructed several major structures for Peter the Great, including the well-known Peter and Paul Fortress and Peter the Great Summer Palace. Though Mikhail Zemtsov was one of the greatest Russian architects of all time, there are few examples of his work survived to this day, and the Church of St. Simeon and Anna is one of them.
Zemtsov had replaced the wooden church with a stunning Petrine Baroque yellow and white stone church with a polygonal dome. The stone church completed in January of 1734 and formally blessed in the attendance of Empress Anna herself. Empress Anna had a powerful connection with that church and is said to be the place where she preferred to worship and pray. Though at first only Empress Anna and a few people from the court had the right to attend this church, it eventually became a public church for the noble who lived in the area as well.
From 1917, after the October Revolution, the Bolsheviks had closed, demolished, or changed various religious places. While only a few churches and monasteries had survived that period, such as the St. Prince Vladimir’s Cathedral, others had turned to other things, such as museums, cafes, warehouses, or simply destroyed during the process. The Church of St. Simeon and Anna was one of the sites that the Soviet government had closed in the 1930s and then turned it into a warehouse. The church was given to the Meteorological Museum after a while and didn’t return to the Orthodox Church until the 1990s. Throughout this time, almost the whole interior of the church was destroyed, and its religious treasures and relics were given to other museums, including the Icon of the Three-Handed Mother of God, which is still preserved in the St. Nicholas Cathedral.
When the Orthodox Church had got the church back, the restoration of once one of the beautiful churches in the city had begun after a short while. Currently, the Church of St. Simeon and Anna is one of the ancient churches in St. Petersburg that is functioning. Though the architecture of the church is somehow alluring for tourists, and also it got most of its religious treasures and relics back, the Church of St. Simeon and Anna isn’t a tourist attraction, and people can only visit the church for pray and worship. One of the main things that we at the Star Travel Group recommend our travelers is to respect rules and Russian culture, given that we strongly recommend our travelers not to enter the church for anything other than worship.
If you’re interested to see inside the great Orthodox cathedrals, we suggest the Kazan Cathedral in Nevsky Prospect or the Saint Isaac’s Cathedral to you and other tourists who want to visit a religious site on their travel to St. Petersburg; these two cathedrals are remarkably significant attractions that you can visit on your Russia tour. We also recommend our tourists to visit our weblog to learn about other Russia attractive places both in Moscow and St. Petersburg. However, most of the top tourist attractions of these two cities are included in our tour to Russia program, which you can search and find the most suitable one that matches your expectations and wishes.
