Admiralty Embankment

Alexander Military Law Academy (Russian: Александровская военно-юридическая академия) (1867–1917) was an educational institution in Russian Empire that provided military law education for officers of Russian Army and Fleet. It was established in 1867 and named after his founder, Emperor Alexander II of Russia in 1908. The Academy was situated in St. Petersburg by 96 Moika Embankment, along with many other institutions of military education. Since 1878 it was reformed into a 3-year higher educational institution, with admittance to any of the three classes, depending on prior education of the admitted. Since 1880 officers from Serbian and Bulgarian Armies were admitted. About 1,000 officers graduated from the academy, as well as a small number or civil officials (which were admitted until 1882).

The Admiralty Building is the former headquarters of the Admiralty Board and the Imperial Russian Navy in Central St. Petersburg, Russia and the current headquarters of the Russian Navy.The edifice was rebuilt in the nineteenth century to support the Tsar's maritime ambitions. The original design was a fortified shipyard which was later surrounded by five bastions and further protected by a moat.The Empire Style edifice visible today lining the Admiralty Quay was constructed to Andreyan Zakharov's design between 1806 and 1823. Located at the western end of the Nevsky Prospekt, The Admiralty with its gilded spire topped by a golden weather-vane in the shape of a small sail warship (Korablik), is one of the city's most conspicuous landmarks and the focal point of old St. Petersburg's three main streets - Nevsky Prospect, Gorokhovaya Street, and Voznesensky Avenue - underscoring the importance Peter I placed on Russia's Navy. Until merger and relocation to the town of Pushkin in 1998 the building housed one of the Soviet and Russian naval engineering schools which since 1927 was named after Felix Dzerzhinsky. Vladimir Nabokov, writer and native of St. Petersburg, wrote a short story in May 1933 entitled "The Admiralty Spire."

Saint Petersburg (Russian: Санкт-Петербург, tr. Sankt-Peterburg, IPA: [ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk] (listen)), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), is the second-largest city in Russia. It is situated on the Neva River, at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea, with a population of roughly 5.4 million residents. Saint Petersburg is the fourth-most populous city in Europe, the most populous city on the Baltic Sea, as well as the world's northernmost city with over 1 million residents. As Russia's Imperial capital, and a historically strategic port, it is governed as a federal city. The city was founded by Tsar Peter the Great on 27 May 1703 on the site of a captured Swedish fortress, and was named after apostle Saint Peter. In Russia, Saint Petersburg is historically and culturally associated with the birth of the Russian Empire and Russia's entry into modern history as a European great power. It served as a capital of the Tsardom of Russia, and the subsequent Russian Empire, from 1713 to 1918 (being replaced by Moscow for a short period of time between 1728 and 1730). After the October Revolution in 1917, the Bolsheviks moved their government to Moscow.Saint Petersburg is known as the "Cultural Capital of Russia," and received over 15 million tourists in 2018. It is considered an important economic, scientific, cultural, and tourism centre of Russia and Europe. In modern times, the city has the nickname of the "Northern Capital" and serves as a home to some federal government bodies such as the Constitutional Court of Russia and the Heraldic Council of the President of the Russian Federation. It is also a seat for the National Library of Russia and a planned location for the Supreme Court of Russia, as well as the home to the headquarters of the Russian Navy, and the Western Military District of the Russian Armed Forces. The Historic Centre of Saint Petersburg and Related Groups of Monuments constitute a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Saint Petersburg is home to the Hermitage, one of the largest art museums in the world, the Lakhta Center, the tallest skyscraper in Europe, and was one of the host cities of the 2018 FIFA World Cup and the UEFA Euro 2020.

The Kunstkamera (or Kunstkammer; Russian: Кунсткамера) is the first museum in Russia. Established by Peter the Great and completed in 1727, the Kunstkammer Building hosts the Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (Russian: Музей антропологии и этнографии имени Петра Великого Российской академии наук), with a collection of almost 2,000,000 items. It is located on the Universitetskaya Embankment in Saint Petersburg, facing the Winter Palace.

Senate Square (Russian: Сенатская площадь), formerly known as Decembrists' Square (Площадь Декабристов) from the 1920s to 2008, and (formally) as Peter's Square (Петровская площадь), from 1782 to 1925, is a city square in Saint Petersburg, Russia. It is situated on the left bank of the Bolshaya Neva, in front of Saint Isaac's Cathedral. In 1925 it was renamed Decembrists' Square to commemorate the Decembrist Revolt, which played out there in December 1825. The square is bounded by the Admiralty building to the east. On the west is the Senate Building and the Synod Building (now headquarters of the Constitutional Court of Russia). The Bronze Horseman monument, a statue honoring Peter the Great, has stood in the square since 1782 - whence the official name of "Peter's Square". On July 29, 2008, the square reverted to the name "Senate Square".

The Asiatic Museum (Азиатский музей) in Saint Petersburg was one of the first museums of Asian art in Europe. Its existence spanned 112 years from 1818 to 1930 when it was incorporated into the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts of the Russian Academy of Sciences. In 1818, the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) learned that Jean-Baptiste Rousseau (1780–1831), the French consul at Aleppo and Tripoli (then both part of the Ottoman Empire), was selling his extensive collection of manuscripts written in the Arabic script. In November of that year, the president of the RAS, Count Sergey Uvarov, wrote to the Board of the RAS requesting that a separate room be put aside in the Academy's cabinet of curiosities for storing this collection of manuscripts (which was eventually purchased by the RAS in two tranches, in 1819 and 1825), as well as other medals, manuscripts and books of oriental origin already in the Museum of the Imperial Academy of Science. The result was the establishment of the Asiatic Museum (Russian: Азиатский музей) of the RAS, in Saint Petersburg. The Asiatic Museum quickly established itself as the main institute for the collection and study of oriental manuscripts and books in Russia, as well as a major international centre for oriental studies, and by the time of the Russian Revolution in 1917, almost a hundred years after its foundation, it housed one of the most extensive collections of oriental manuscripts and printed books in the world. Following the Russian Revolution, the Asiatic Museum continued under the same name until May 1930, when the Institute of Oriental Studies (IOS) of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR was founded, and the Asiatic Museum was incorporated into this new institute.

The Lions at the Dvortsovaya pier are two lion sculptures in bronze placed at the Admiralty embankment in Saint Petersburg since 1832. The lions are copies of the late 16th century Italian Medici lions in Florence. The lions are the best known among several Medici lions and other lion sculptures in Saint Petersburg. The sculptures were created by the German craftsman, Johan Gottlieb Prang to designs by sculptor Ivan Prokofiev.

Palace Bridge (Russian: Дворцо́вый мост, Dvortsoviy Most), a road- and foot-traffic bascule bridge, spans the Neva River in Saint Petersburg between Palace Square and Vasilievsky Island. Like every other Neva bridge (except for Big Obukhovsky Bridge), it is drawn by night, making foot travel between various parts of the city virtually impossible. It was built by the French firm Société de Construction des Batignolles between 1912 and 1916. The total length of Palace Bridge is 260.1 metres, width is 27.8 metres. It is actually composed of five spans, the southernmost joining Palace Embankment between the Winter Palace and the Admiralty and leading to Palace Square.

The Bronze Horseman (Russian: Медный всадник, literally "copper horseman") is an equestrian statue of Peter the Great in the Senate Square in Saint Petersburg, Russia. It was opened to the public on 7 (18) August 1782. Commissioned by Catherine the Great, it was created by the French sculptor Étienne Maurice Falconet. The name influenced a 1833 poem of the same name by Alexander Pushkin, which is widely considered one of the most significant works of Russian literature. The statue is now one of the symbols of Saint Petersburg. The statue's pedestal is the Thunder Stone, the largest stone ever moved by humans. The stone originally weighed about 1500 tonnes, but was carved down during transportation to its current size and weight of 1,250 tons.

The Zoological Museum of the Zoological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences is a Russian museum devoted to zoology. It is located in Saint Petersburg, on Universitetskaya Embankment. It is one of the ten largest nature history museums in the world.Peter the Great's Kunstkamera collections included zoological specimens. In 1724, the museum became a part of the Russian Academy of Sciences. A printed catalogue of the contents was published in 1742. It listed the zoology, botany, geology and anthropology specimens and contained an album of etchings of the building and plan of some of its parts. In 1766, Peter Simon Pallas, a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, was appointed curator of Zoology. In 1832, the zoological collection was split from the Kunstkamera and, in 1896, moved nearby to its present location in the former southern warehouse of the Saint Petersburg bourse (constructed in 1826-1832). In 1931, the Zoological Institute was established within the Academy of Sciences, which included the museum. In the front hall of the museum is a monument to Karl Ernst von Baer by the entrance, as well as skeletons of cetaceans, including the enormous 27-metre-long (89 ft) blue whale, and mounted pinnipeds. In the gallery above the front hall, the entomological collection is displayed. The second and third halls form a long passage with systematic collections and dioramas dating back to the early 20th century. The second hall hosts the collection of fishes, amphibians, reptiles, birds and invertebrates, mounted or preserved in formalin, and their skeletons or shells. The collection of mammals, including woolly mammoths, is displayed in the third hall.

This park should not be confused with Alexander Park in St. Petersburg and Alexander Garden in Moscow. The Alexander Garden (Александровский сад) lies along the south and west façades of the Russian Admiralty in St. Petersburg, parallel to the Neva River and Admiralty Quay, extending from Palace Square in the east to St. Isaac's Cathedral in the west. The English park is named after Alexander II of Russia who ordered some 52 species of trees to be planted there. It was formerly known as the Admiralty Boulevard, the Admiralty Meadow, and the Labourers Garden. The garden was designed by Luigi Rusca in 1805. William Gould, an English-born gardener, was hired to raze the southern ramparts of the Admiralty Fortress, replacing them with four lime-tree alleys. The moat of the fortress was filled in 1819, making room for additional lanes. The garden was a traditional place for Easter and Maslenitsa revels. Three lanes leading from the Admiralty tower to Nevsky Avenue, Voznesensky Avenue and Gorokhovaya Street were designed by Ivan Fomin in 1923. This arrangement made the Admiralty Tower the focal point of the entire downtown. By contrast with the Summer Garden, the Alexander Garden originally had no statuary. It was not until 1833 that Paolo Triscorni's marble copies of the Farnese Hercules and Farnese Flora appeared. A fountain was installed in front of the Admiralty tower in 1879. The Nikolai Przhevalsky monument and four busts (Mikhail Glinka, by Vladimir Pashchenko, and three by Vasily Kreitan; namely Nikolai Gogol, Mikhail Lermontov and Vasily Zhukovsky) date from the 1890s. Chancellor Gorchakov's statue was added in 1998.

Saint Isaac's Cathedral or Isaakievskiy Sobor (Russian: Исаа́киевский Собо́р) is a large architectural landmark cathedral that currently functions as a museum with occasional church services in Saint Petersburg, Russia. It is dedicated to Saint Isaac of Dalmatia, a patron saint of Peter the Great, who had been born on the feast day of that saint. It was originally built as a cathedral but was turned into a museum by the Soviet government in 1931 and has remained a museum ever since, with church services held in a side chapel since the 1990's. In 2017, the Governor of Saint Petersburg offered to transfer the cathedral back to the Russian Orthodox Church, but this was not accomplished due to the protests of St Petersburg citizens opposing the offer.