Two sunsets over the Neva River

The Lieutenant Schmidt Bridge, aka Blagoveshchensky Bridge, aka Nikolayevsky Bridge, is the last bridge over the Neva River. Downstream, beyond the bridge, riverboats rest, waiting for night shipping hours, and then the Neva River flows into the Gulf of Finland. In winter the navigation temporarily stops, the surface of the river is covered with ice. However, this year the winter was very warm and the surface of the river was covered with ice only partially - and in March and this ice almost all melted.

The bridge connects the Admiralty part of the city with Vasilievsky Island, and from the bridge there is a very beautiful view of the sunset. Therefore, evening walks on foot across the bridge are among my favourite walks. In this post, I have combined two walks together. The first walk happened on a cold day. It had snowed during the day and had not had time to melt completely. The surface of the river was covered in a thin layer of ice and turned into a mirror. The colours of the sunset and the yellow light of the street lamps reflected beautifully off the ice and snow.

The second time I was luckier with the weather - it was warm, the ice on the river had melted almost completely, only small patches of ice remained near the embankments. The pavements were cleared of snow and ice, and it was much more pleasant to walk around. But this time there were not the same beautiful reflections.

Both times I started my walk on the English Embankment. A number of buildings with illuminated facades are palaces and mansions built in the 18th and 19th centuries. Among them stands out a building in classical style with columns, it is the mansion of Count Rumyantsev. Count Nikolay Rumyantsev was an educator and patron of the arts, he collected monuments of Russian culture and history. Now in this mansion works one of the branches of the museum of the city history.

The opposite bank of the Neva River was built up with stone houses in the XVIII century, according to the project of architect Domenico Trezzini. This part of the embankment has preserved a special atmosphere of ‘old times’. The embankment ends with the building of the Mining University. The twelve-column Doric portico of this building is decorated with sculptures. The far part of the embankment was built as a huge wharf, in summer small yachts and tugboats moor here.