View of New Holland Island in St. Petersburg. Development of the island will cost 12 billion rubles over the next 7 years. Note the 2 artists views of what the island will look like once the project is complete.

New Holland Island in St. Petersburg has opened to visitors for the first time in 300 years.

Visitors are welcome to a park for the rest of this summer offering exhibition space for modern-day painters, a playground, a café and the city’s first public vegetable garden.

Two key goals for the developers of the New Holland Island project are to restore and renovate the historic architectural ensemble on the island, as well as to create a unique mixed-use facility that will become a central part of the lives of city residents. 

At estimated 12 billion rubles will be spent over the next 7 years that will include a collection of cultural spaces, theaters, exhibition halls, educational centers, and science labs, specializing in the advancement of information technologies. Alongside them would be a vital array of commercial infrastructure, from office space to residences, hotels and more.

A unique complex of architectural monuments was built on the island back in 1719, while in 1721, Peter the Great opened Russia’s first naval base there.

The island dates back to the birth of St. Petersburg itself and has been the domain of the military ever since it began to be developed.  As a result, the island has been off limits to the general public for nearly 300 years.

© The Voice of Russia. 16 July, 2011

A monument to Karl Marx located in the Sovietskaya Square in central Penza has been dismantled to make way for a Russian Orthodox Cathedral that will be reconstructed after it was destroyed by the Soviets. 

A section of the Spassky Cathedral will occupy this part of the square, its construction is already underway.

The decision to move the Marx monument was made by the city administration, with plans to move the monument eventually to Karl Marx Street.

The monument to the father of Communism was originally erected in November 1960. The two-meter bronze bust was mounted on a six-meter granite stand.

The Spassky Cathedral before the Revolution 

The Spassky Cathedral was originally built between 1800-1824, and destroyed by the Soviets in 1934. Numerous members of the Russian Imperial family visited the cathedral, including Grand Dukes Mikhail Pavlovich, Konstantin Konstantinovich, Mikhail Alexandrovich, Alexander Nikolayevich (the future Emperor Alexander II), as well as Emperors Alexander I, Nicholas I and Nicholas II.

Artists concept of the Spassky Cathedral already under construction 

© Royal Russia. 14 July, 2011

Ganina Yama was a deep pit in the Four Brothers Mine near the village of Koptyaki, situated 15 km north of Ekaterinburg. In the early morning hours of 17 July, 1918, the bodies of Tsar Nicholas II, his wife, five children and four faithful retainers (all of whom had been murdered at the Ipatiev House earlier) were secretly transported to Ganina Yama and thrown into the pit.

The Russian Orthodox Church, relying on the pro-monarchist White Army's report in preference to any Bolshevik or government-supplied information, and doubting the DNA identification, declared Ganina Yama as Holy Ground.

The Imperial Family and their retinue had been canonized in 1981 by the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad, but it was not until 2000, and after much debate, that they were canonized as passion bearers by the Russian Orthodox Church inside Russia. The grounds at Ganina Yama were therefore dedicated to honour the family's humility during capture and their status as political martyrs.

With financial assistance from the Ural Mining and Metallurgical Company, the Church constructed the Monastery of the Holy Imperial Passion Bearers at the site in 2001. The monastery was blessed by His Holiness Alexey II, Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia (1929-2008). A tall cross marks the edge of the mine shaft where the bodies of the Imperial family were desposed of.

Seven chapels were later constructed at the site, one for each member of the Imperial Family. Today, the monastery welcomes Orthodox faithful and monarchists from across Russia and around the world.

© Royal Russia. 13 July, 2011

The Head of the Russian Imperial House Grand Duchess Maria Vladimirovna, has sent a wire to the Russian Prosecutor General Mr. Yuri Chaika, asking his assistance to obtain a copy of the decision to close the investigation of a murder of Emperor Nicholas II and Members of His Family in 1918.

The criminal case was closed by the Investigations Committee (Russian analogue of the American FBI) in January 2009. Grand Duchess Maria disputed that decision in the court. Her claim was partially recognised by the court, but Grand Duchess received only 26 of 774 pages of the decision of the investigator to close the case.

The Grand Duchess now hopes that the Prosecutor General will help Her to receive a complete copy of the document.

©  “Легитимист” - Информационное Агентство. 12 July, 2011

Mikhail Piotrovsky, Director of the State Hermitage Museum 

The world famous Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg is to have a new web site in 2014 when the museum will be 250 years old.

The site will be made in partnership with the IBM American company and implemented with sponsors’ money. This was reported to the RIA Novosti news agency by the Director of the Hermitage Mikhail Piotrovsky.

The site of this museum was considered the world’s best for a long time. Now it takes second place but the museum hopes to return its leadership.

Piotrovsky described the digitalization of  the collection which is taking place along several tracks simultaneously. An electronic catalogue is already available for internal use and by 2014 all Internet users will have access to the digital collection.

© The Voice of Russia. 11 July, 2011

Russia will celebrate the 450th anniversary of St. Basil’s Cathedral by opening an exhibition dedicated to the so-called “holy fool” who gave his name to the soaring structure of bright-hued onion domes that is a quintessential image of Russia.

The eccentrically devout St. Basil wore no clothes even during the harsh Russian winters and was one of the very few Muscovites who dared to lambast tyrannical Tsar Ivan the Terrible.

Ivan, whose gory purges claimed tens of thousands of lives, feared St. Basil as “a seer of people’s hearts and minds,” according to one chronicle. He personally carried St. Basil’s coffin to a grave right outside the Kremlin.

The cathedral, constructed to commemorate Ivan’s victory over Mongol rulers, was built on the burial site.

Deputy Culture Minister Andrei Busygin said Friday that the exhibition is opening Tuesday as part of anniversary celebrations in the cathedral after a decade-long restoration that cost 390 million rubles ($14 million). The exhibition will display relics and icons of St. Basil and other religious eccentrics, who were known as “holy fools.”

The exhibition will be part of massive celebrations of St. Basil’s anniversary that will also include a service to be held by Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill and a late-night church bell concert.

“This cathedral is a shrine and a symbol of Russia,” Busygin said. “It’s a miracle that it survived at all.”

The building was severely shelled during the 1917 Bolshevik takeover of the Kremlin and was patched up during the subsequent civil war and famine.

“Those gaping wounds were stuffed with whatever was at hand,” said Andrei Batalov, deputy director of the State Kremlin Museums.

Early Communist leaders — who persecuted countless clerics of all faiths and destroyed tens of thousands of religious buildings — wanted St. Basil’s dynamited because it blocked the way for military parades, and only the cathedral’s conversion into a museum saved it.

A century earlier, Napoleon Bonaparte also ordered St. Basil’s blown up during his army’s hasty retreat from Moscow in 1812, but a heavy rain put out the burning fuses.

Originally named the Holy Trinity Cathedral, over the centuries it became known as where St. Basil is buried.

The design of its nine onion-shaped, multicolored domes combines the traditions of Russian wooden architecture with Byzantine and Islamic influences into a unique structure.

Batalov said the restoration focused on recreating the way the building looked by the late 17th century, when the nine domes were united by a wraparound floor.

By that time, St. Basil’s became a symbolic New Jerusalem and the center of Palm Sunday walks, when the Moscow Patriarch approached it sitting on a donkey to recreate Jesus’ arrival in Jerusalem.

© The Moscow Times. 11 July, 2011

Opening day of Faberge Revealed at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, in Richmond, Virginia, drew a steady stream of visitors on opening day, July 9th, 2011.

© Richmond Times-Dispatch. 11 July, 2011

Ganina Yama 

The 10th annual Imperial Days opened today in Ekaterinburg. The festival is organized by the International Festival of Orthodox Culture and ends on July 21st.

Tens of thousands of Orthodox faithful from across Russia and other countries will take part in the event that marks the final days of the last Russian Imperial family in Ekaterinburg in 1918.

Participants are invited to religious services, tours of the Church of all Saints (Church on the Blood) on the site of the Ipatiev House, Ganima Yama, Alapayevsk, lectures, exhibitions, concerts, bell-ringing, plays among other events.

The highlight of the Imperial Days is a night-long service held on the anniversary of the murders at the Church of all Saints. At daybreak, a mass procession walks four hours to Ganina Yama for another ceremony.

Ganina Yama was a nine foot-deep pit in the Four Brothers Mine near the village of Koptyaki.  The Russian Orthodox Church, relying on the pro-monarchist White Army's report in preference to any Bolshevik or government-supplied information, and doubting the DNA identification, declared Ganima Yama as Holy Ground.  

© Royal Russia. 9 July, 2011

The Monument of Catherine II situated on Ostrovsky Square (formerly Alexandra Square up until 1923) received its annual cleaning this week. The cleaning includes a special soap solution and then washed off with water.

The monument was erected in 1873 from the designs of M.O. Mikeshin and A.M. Opekushin. A base of reddish granite supports a bell-shaped pedestal bearing the figure of the Empress, 13 feet in height, clad in an ermine mantle, and holding the imperial sceptre in her right hand and a wreath in her left. Round the pedestal are nine colossal bronze figures of celebrated favourites of the Empress, including Grigorii Potemkin and Princess E.R. Dashova.

© Royal Russia. 9 July, 2011