Everyone (myself included) associates Peterhof with beautiful parks. Long alleys, park pavilions and fountains are exactly what every tourist expects to see in Peterhof. This suburb steadily ranks at the top of the "must see" lists precisely because of the parks. The main park with its fountains and the imperial palace is the most visited place. There are several other popular parks in Peterhof. The idea of coming to Peterhof without entering the parks is not the most trivial idea. But that's exactly what I did.
When you head to Peterhof's parks, you might see residential buildings outside the window of a train, bus or car. You don't want to get out and have a closer look; the main buildings in this small town are standard apartment blocks of the second half of the 20th century. But when you take a closer look at this monotonous landscape, you begin to notice the unobvious. Sometimes you catch a glimpse of an old brick wall in the gap between the standard five-storey houses, or you see an old church in the middle of a garden, or you cross a canal on an old cast-iron bridge.
I decided to turn away from my usual route to take a look at the old buildings at the back of the block, which I happened to notice as I drove past. I started my walk near the pavilions of the imperial palace, but instead of walking closer to the palace and down to the park, I headed in a completely different direction.
I ended up in a small residential area with old one- and two-storey houses. It's just a few streets that form a small but very cozy neighbourhood. The buildings are not architectural monuments, they are ordinary nineteenth-century constructions.
I have glanced in a reference book, and learned the names of these houses: "Kuzmin's house, Zolotova's dacha, Razumovskaya's dacha gatehouse" - and so on. This city suburb was a dacha area in the XIX century, and some old stone dachas have survived to this day and been converted into blocks of flats. The dacha atmosphere does not seem to have completely disappeared from these places, despite all the upheavals of subsequent years.
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| Smartphone | Google Pixel 3a |
| Location | Peterhof, Saint Petersburg, Russia |
This is my entry for the #WednesdayWalk challenge by 