The main event of last week was Shrovetide. Shrovetide is a traditional holiday before the beginning of Lent. According to tradition, all week long you should eat pancakes with butter (the name of the holiday in Russian is derived from the word ‘butter’). Instead of butter or together with butter it is allowed to use sour cream, caviar, cottage cheese, jam, honey. The culmination of the holiday comes on Sunday. The day before, I decided to take a walk in the park on Yelagin Island and look at the preparations for the Shrovetide celebrations on the Shrovetide Meadow. The weather was gloomy and grey. So I decided to combine my walk with a visit to the museum: first walk through the rooms of Yelagin Palace and then walk through the park.
Yelagin Palace is a monument of architecture in the Palladian style. This palace kept its name after one of its first owners, Ivan Yelagin. Ivan Yelagin was famous for his hospitality, the guests got used to go ‘to Yelagin’ and the name stuck. In the XIX century the island together with the old estate of Ivan Yelagin was bought by the Cabinet of His Imperial Majesty. The park was designed and the palace was rebuilt by the famous architect Carl Rossi. The island later became one of the summer residences of the imperial family.
The Yelagin Palace now houses a museum. The rooms of the ground floor tell about the life of the imperial family, while the first floor hosts the exhibition ‘The History of the Cabinet’. The rooms of the first floor are decorated in different historical styles and allow you to see how the design of offices changed in different styles. In one of the rooms the office of Emperor Alexander I is restored, in another room there is a typical office of a statesman, in the third room there is a small ladies' office in Art Nouveau style... The exhibition is very interesting and I enjoyed looking at the exhibits.
The weather was quite gloomy in the morning, but in the afternoon there were some gaps in the clouds. I hoped that by evening the clouds would part and I would see a beautiful sunset, but my hopes were not fulfilled. The weather remained grey and gloomy. At the end of the walk, I only saw a little bit of purple reflections in the clouds. I took a short walk around the park between the park pavilions. There is a tall fir tree in the centre of the ice-skating rink - I think it will stay in that spot until the ice-skating rink is finished. Christmas is long gone, but Christmas trees on city streets often remain until spring.
A tall straw effigy of the Shrovetide has been installed in the Shrovetide Meadow, but it is not possible to get close to it yet, the installation work is not completely finished. A wooden box for collecting notes is installed in the courtyard of the Kitchen Building. Usually all traditions connected with fulfilment of wishes work like this: you make a wish and hope that it will come true. Shrovetide wishes work the other way round. You should make a wish, what you want to get rid of, and write it down on a piece of paper. You can write down any offences and sorrows of the past year. All notes will be burned together with the effigy of Shrovetide on the last day of the holiday, on Sunday. Shrovetide is like the Phoenix bird, everything old is burnt so that life can be reborn.
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| Smartphone | Google Pixel 3a |
| Location | Saint Petersburg, Russia |
This is my entry for the #WednesdayWalk challenge by 