There are many ways to enjoy your travel to Russia, especially if you visit St. Petersburg during your Russia tour because St. Petersburg has lots of attractions and opportunities to offer to its visitors. There you can visit multiple museums in all sorts of genres, including art and culture, such as Hermitage and Russian State Museum; history museums, such as Museum of Political History; religion museums, such as the Museum of History of Religion, and many more museums that can entertain, educate, and please you and your family.
You can also visit several parks and gardens on your tour to St. Petersburg because that city has loads of beautiful and romantic places, such as the Summer Garden, the Mikhailovsky Garden, Peterhof’s parks, Pavlovsk, Pushkin’s parks, Alexander Garden, and many more places that you should visit on your spare time during your tour to Russia.
There are also interactive museums that can be entertaining for both children and adults, such as Grand Maket Rossiya and Petrovskaya Akvatoria scale model museum, in which you can learn about different regions of Russia, the history of St. Petersburg, and some of the critical events in Russia history. We at the Star Travel Company extremely recommend you visit these two museums if you had enough time on your tour to Russia.
Among all the options above, you can also have the opportunity to visit St. Petersburg’s cultural centers, in which you can have fun, relax, learn, play, and enjoy yourself during your travel to Russia. One of those cultural centers is New Holland Island, which is built at the beginning of the 18th century, but it turned to an entertainment, cultural center a few years ago.
New Holland Island was constructed at the beginning of the 18th century, when Kryukov Canal and Admiralty Canal were dug, which made the Russia first-ever naval port; after Peter I had built Russia’s first naval port, he also attached a wooden palace on it for himself. Although Peter the Great took the chance to build a naval port, the island was made to store timber, and since its canal was similar to Amsterdam canals, and Peter the Great also had significant respect for anything Dutch, he called the island his New Holland. After that, several structures were built on the island to house the store for wood, shipbuilding tools and equipment, and other supplies that might be required.
During the second half of the 18th century, the decision made to replace all the wooden structures on the New Holland Island with a stone one, and it was supervised by Russian architect Savva Chevakinsky. It was started in 1765 and ended in 1780, but in the middle of the reconstruction, the French architect Jean-Baptiste de la Mothe took the work in his hands. He was responsible for the famous monumental arch on New Holland. The New Holland Arch is a neoclassical structure made out of red granite and links the pool inside the artificial island to the Moika River. The arch is 23-meter-long in height and 8-meter-long in width, which made it perfect for the engineers to test new ships for the Russian fleet.
There were 26 structures on the island, which unlike the other buildings in St. Petersburg that their exterior was painted and plastered, the outside of the structures on the island had displayed the red brick facade, which became the norm for the industrial buildings in St. Petersburg. The New Holland island didn’t get its present appearance until Alexander Shtaubert added the Naval Prison building to the island in 1828. The Russian phrase “don’t get into the bottle,” which means don’t go to prison was probably originated from this building because of its shape. In 1893, a basin was also added to the island, which Alexey Krylov used it for naval architecture and experiments in ship flood ability.
Although the island belonged to the Russian Navy from the beginning, the 20th century made it all more serious. The most powerful radio station, the Naval Headquarters Radio Station, was installed on the island at the beginning of the First World War, which was used by the Bolshevik to declare to the world that their party is seizing the power in Russia. The island continued as an army base, which they used as a mixed-use facility for the next decades until 2004.
The 21st century was a complete revival for the island; an unfortunate event, entirely changed the fate of the island. A massive fire had destroyed most of the structures on the island, which led to a competition to redevelop this historical site in St. Petersburg. Norman Foster's proposal for a complex, including business, hotel, entertainment, and cultural center had won the competition, but because of the financial problems, it got dropped. Daria Zhukova (owner of the Garage Museum) owns the island now, and Work AC group is currently redeveloping the island to make space for the art museum and gallery alongside an entertaining center for the people. At first, the island was opened only during summer with loads of cultural and amusing events, but currently, it’s also open during winters with one of the largest ice rink in St. Petersburg. We at the Star Travel Company recommend a visit to this island both during summer and winter to people who have decided to travel to Russia and visit St. Petersburg.
Currently, there are several structures on the island, including the Bottle House, which is entirely restored, and each floor has a different purpose, such as the ground floor that has a small stage for music performances, the first floor that is dedicated gastronomy, the second floor is an art gallery, and the third floor is dedicated to health, sport, and beauty; there’s a temporary stage, on which artists from theatre, music, and other types of performing art perform their talent; there are two playgrounds for children, and toddlers; there’s also the food kiosk that provides food and drink for children and adults on the island, and many more places that you have to visit during your tour to Russia.
We at the Star Travel Company suggest a visit to our weblog to learn more about top Russia attractive places and other amazing things that you can do on your travel to Russia. We also have several tips and pieces of advice on how to have a great tour to Russia.
