IT was one of the world’s more arcane ceremonies. I left my hotel just after midnight to witness a bridge opening. That is the raising of a bridge’s bascules, not a ribbon-snipping ceremony.
It was not even as if the event was rare— it happens almost every night in summer. But this was St Petersburg, where bridges are no mere river crossings, they are valves to the city’s soul. How else to account for the crowd of 300, nearly all Russians, who had already gathered beside the river Neva by the time I arrived? So had a pop band, a troupe of fire-eaters, refreshment stalls and shoals of sightseeing craft. A boardwalk of boats, packed across the water, gunwale to gunwale, hovered in front of the bridge like fish held in a current.
At 1.15 am, the bridge opened. The pop group, suddenly silent, was superseded by Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No 1 ringing out from speakers on the bridge, the edges of which were picked out in azure lights. A bell rang and the six-lane roadway seemed to buckle in the middle before arching up in two vast slabs of Tarmac. It was as if it had raised its arms in exultation. As well it might.
Palace Bridge, scene of the festivities, crosses the Neva from the Winter Palace, the former residence of the Tsars, to Vasilievsky Island. Opened in 1916, and the last bridge to have been built before the revolution, it’s one of nine that open every night in summer.
Denne historien er fra December 25, 2019-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Denne historien er fra December 25, 2019-utgaven av Country Life UK.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
