The Haunted City of St. Petersburg which once became Leningrad…

Listen to Vitas

We stopped in front of the too celebrated statue of Peter the Great,piskarevo2 placed on its rock by the Empress Catherine, then St. Isaac’s Cathedral, the Winter Palace; another mighty result of human will applying human physical powers in a struggle with the laws of nature, severe Northern climate in winters and extremes in hot summers.

In order to build the city and its beauties unheard-of efforts were necessary: 6000 workmen were continually employed; of these a considerable number died daily, but the victims were instantly replaced by other labors brought forward to perish, in their turn. And the sole end of all these sacrifices was to gratify the caprice of the emperor.

piskarevo3From the start the dead people haunted this city. Many palaces have spooky legends around them, the latest were like ghosts captured forever on film by Sergei Larenkov depict haunted past of the 900-day siege of Leningrad from September 9, 1941 till January 27, 1944. His haunting, hybrid images of past and present St. piskarevo4Petersburg-formerly known as Leningrad- are digitally superimposed, the old image over new, producing these eerier and thought-provoking shots.

We visited the Mars Field and the Piskarevo Cemetery in St. Petersburg. They are dedicated to all the victims of the  WWII. It was a gloomy, unpleasant day, windy and nasty. We looked around. No one was commemorated from the old, old past and it is very pity! The cemetery church was closed. We took some pictures, listened to the somber classical music which created in us a sad and mournful mood. We wandered about and looked upon the plaques that were set on each mount where the victims of the siege lie buried, never to be forgotten. But a strange feeling was present in the air there as if somebody or something was watching us from the behind or somewhere else…

See the haunted city slide show.

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