The Peter and Paul Fortress (Saint Peter and Saint Paul, that is) sits across the Neva river from the city centre. It was built as a fortress, has served as a prison, and today is basically a museum. We walked to it across the Troitskiy bridge.
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| The cathedral inside the fortress has an extremely tall spire - reaching 123 metres. |
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| Crossing the Neva River to the fortress. |
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| The inner gate, with the Russian double-headed eagle above. |
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| Who's this - Peter rabbit? |
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| A weird bronze of Peter the Great, hands polished by millions of visitors' touch. |
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| The cathedral is extremely ornate inside. |
The Peter and Paul Cathedral sits inside the fortress, and that spire on top makes it the world's tallest Orthodox church. It dates from the earliest days of the city, and was built for Peter the Great. Inside are the tombs of most of the tsars and tsarinas.
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| The tsars must have liked gold. |
We had an interesting day out at the fortress, and decided to take a boat back across the river. Due to language difficulties, combined with incompetence and a slightly slippery ticket seller we found after we boarded the cross-river ferry that it was actually a scenic canal cruise boat which was going to take over an hour to get to where we wanted to go! The canal cruise which followed was mildly interesting but marred by the commentary provided over the over-amplified PA system, an unceasing stream of Russian which probably no-one on board understood.
