When I first looked at Smolny, it felt less like a cathedral and more like a piece of the Petersburg sky that had somehow turned into stone. Much of this city pulls you toward the ground with granite, water, mist and heavy façades. Here, blue and white seem to move in the opposite direction. Looking up at the domes, I did not feel the weight of the building. I felt something almost weightless, as though the architecture were not trying to reach the sky, but had slowly descended from it. Yet the beauty of Smolny is not limited to its façade. In this part of Petersburg, different centuries seem to stand within walking distance of one another. There is the language of faith and the imperial world, and nearby the memories of education, politics, revolution and an entirely different Russia. The city does not force these histories into one comfortable story. It simply leaves contradictory worlds standing beside each other. Perhaps that is one of the reasons Petersburg remains so fascinating. Inside, the movement and theatricality of the exterior seemed to give way to a more restrained silence. Great buildings often make us conscious of how small we are. Smolny left me with a different feeling. I did not think about being small. I thought about being temporary. People come and disappear. Beliefs change. Governments change. The meanings of squares and buildings change. Ideas once considered permanent may survive only in history books a few generations later. And yet certain buildings remain. Perhaps that is why Smolny is easy to photograph but difficult to describe. The cathedral fits inside the frame; the time it carries does not. When I left, it was not the beauty of the domes that stayed with me most, but a thought: Some buildings do not rise toward the sky. They rise from the past into the present.

Amon Mark KYOKWIJUKA

Level 4 Local Expert

The place is amazing with alot of natural history and humour.

Екатерина К.

Level 6 Local Expert

My favorite place, this time got there on the sunset. It worths visiting in the evening or in the morning to be able to admire the beauty of the place without tour busses

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