Russia - St Petersburg - Canal Cruise 05 (VR180)

Embankments with palaces’ facades, bridges with graceful fences reflected in the river smooth surface … These paintings, like gems in a kaleidoscope, make up a portrait of the beautiful and mysterious Northern capital. Water gives a special charm to urban landscapes – the rivers and canals of St. Petersburg wash its islands and draw an intricate pattern on the map of the megalopolis. We will tell about the natural and man-made channels crossing the city on the Neva.

Peter the Great decided to build a port city, which was to become the “gateway” to the Baltic. Reclaimed from the Swedes, the Neva delta was the best place to fulfill these plans. The river flows from Lake Ladoga and brings its waters into the Gulf of Finland, divided into several branches. The area of the delta is more than 80 square km. All this space was covered by large and small rivers, to which, during construction, artificial canals were added. Man-made rivers in St. Petersburg were created to drain wetlands: water was diverted to the dugout channels, and land areas were improved with the help of extracted soil. In addition, the channels were built for the transportation of goods. The number of islands in St. Petersburg at the end of the XIX century reached hundreds. As the city grew, the need for a part of the “waterways” disappeared, so they fell asleep. A number of large and small channels disappeared from the map of St. Petersburg, leaving him with their own names: Ligovsky, Vvedensky, Masterovoy, Maslyany and others. In place of these avenues and streets, the Neva water once splashed. Today, there are much fewer islands – 42. Of the 93 watercourses flowing through modern St. Petersburg, 20 are man-made, and the total length of canals and rivers is 282 km.

Видео Russia - St Petersburg - Canal Cruise 05 (VR180) канала Baz Travels