“Goscilo and Norris’ innovative anthology provides Slavic scholars with a panoramic view of the city’s literary, pictorial and social manifestations.” —Europe-Asia Studies For more than three centuries, St. Petersburg, founded in 1703 by Peter the Great as Russia’s westward-oriented capital and as a visually stunning showcase of Russia’s imperial ambitions, has been the country’s most mythologized city. Like a museum piece, it has functioned as a site for preservation, a literal and imaginative place where Russians can commune with idealized pasts. Preserving Petersburg represents a significant departure from traditional representations. By moving beyond the “Petersburg text” created by canonized writers and artists, the contributors to this engrossing volume trace the ways in which St. Petersburg has become a “museum piece,” embodying history, nostalgia, and recourse to memories of the past. The essays in this attractively illustrated volume trace a process of preservation that stretches back nearly three centuries, as manifest in the works of noted historians, poets, novelists, artists, architects, filmmakers, and dramatists. “The collection truly sparkles as the contributors each in turn take up this snuff box of a city . . . and breathe movement and life into the idealized Petersburg museum.” —Gregory Stroud, Bennington College “This collection brings together history, literature, architecture, and the politics of memory.” —Choice “An interesting and important contribution to existing scholarship on St. Petersburg’s myth, cult, and text . . . this volume is distinctive.” —Catharine Theimer Nepomnyashchy, Columbia University “A truly innovative contribution to the scholarship on Petersburg . . . The volume should be read by all serious Slavic scholars.” —Emily Johnson, University of Oklahoma

The rich history of Petersburg, Virginia, can be documented through images of the community. The photographs in Then & Now: Petersburg showcase Petersburg's past and also provide a visual record of the city in the first decade of the 21st century. While some images illustrate dramatic changes over time, others have a timeless appeal.

In the bookshops of present-day St. Petersburg, guidebooks abound. Both modern descriptions of Russia’s old imperial capital and lavish new editions of pre-Revolutionary texts sell well, primarily attracting an audience of local residents. Why do Russians read one- and two-hundred-year-old guidebooks to a city they already know well? In How St. Petersburg Learned to Study Itself, Emily Johnson traces the Russian fascination with local guides to the idea of kraevedenie. Kraevedenie (local studies) is a disciplinary tradition that in Russia dates back to the early twentieth century. Practitioners of kraevedenie investigate local areas, study the ways human society and the environment affect each other, and decipher the semiotics of space. They deconstruct urban myths, analyze the conventions governing the depiction of specific regions and towns in works of art and literature, and dissect both outsider and insider perceptions of local population groups. Practitioners of kraevedenie helped develop and popularize the Russian guidebook as a literary form. Johnson traces the history of kraevedenie, showing how St. Petersburg–based scholars and institutions have played a central role in the evolution of the discipline. Distinguished from obvious Western equivalents such as cultural geography and the German Heimatkunde by both its dramatic history and unique social significance, kraevedenie has, for close to a hundred years, served as a key forum for expressing concepts of regional and national identity within Russian culture. How St. Petersburg Learned to Study Itself is published in collaboration with the Harriman Institute at Columbia University as part of its Studies of the Harriman Institute series.

Pushkin's palaces or Dostoevsky's slums? Many a modern-day visitor to St. Petersburg has one or, more likely, both of these images in mind when setting foot in this stage set-like setting for some of the world's most treasured literary masterpieces. What they overlook is the vast uncharted territory in between. In Mapping St. Petersburg, Julie Buckler traces the evolution of Russia's onetime capital from a "conceptual hierarchy" to a living cultural system--a topography expressed not only by the city's physical structures but also by the literary texts that have helped create it. By favoring noncanonical works and "underdescribed spaces," Buckler seeks to revise the literary monumentalization of St. Petersburg--with Pushkin and Dostoevsky representing two traditional albeit opposing perspectives--to offer an off-center view of a richer, less familiar urban landscape. She views this grand city, the product of Peter the Great's ambitious vision, not only as a geographical entity but also as a network of genres that carries historical and cultural meaning. We discover the busy, messy "middle ground" of this hybrid city through an intricate web of descriptions in literary works; nonfiction writings such as sketches, feuilletons, memoirs, letters, essays, criticism; and urban legends, lore, songs, and social practices--all of which add character and depth to this refurbished imperial city.

Udstillingskatalog til Hermitage Museet, Sankt Petersborg, indeholdende franske malere

Preservation is Overtaking Us brings together two lectures given by Rem Koolhaas at Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, along with a response (framed as a supplement to the original lectures) by Jorge Otero-Pailos. In the first essay Koolhaas describes alternative strategies for preserving Beijing, China. The second talk marks the inaugural Paul Spencer Byard lecture, named in celebration of the longtime professor of Historic Preservation at GSAPP. These two lectures trace key moments of Koolhaas' thinking on preservation, including his practice's entry into China and the commission to redevelop the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia. In a format well known to Koolhaas' readers, Otero-Pailos reworks the lectures into a working manifesto, using it to interrogate OMA's work from within the discipline of preservation.

Care & Conservation of Manuscripts, Volume 9 - Proceedings of the Eighth International Seminar Held at the University of Copenhagen, 14th to 15th April 2005

This book addresses the effects of the environment on Saint Petersburg’s cultural heritage. It summarizes the results of long-term, large-scale monitoring of monuments in, and the environment (air, soil, vegetation) of, the historical Saint Petersburg Necropolis. The book offers detailed descriptions of the unique collection of decorative stones in the Necropolis and discusses the deposits that were most likely used to create them. In addition, it characterizes the processes of stone and bronze monuments’ degradation in response to physical, chemical and biogenic influences. Special attention is paid to describing the monitoring methodology and the structure of the monitoring information database. Drawing on the methodologies and cases presented here, the book subsequently puts forward a strategy for the conservation and restoration of these unique monuments. This book approaches practical questions of monuments preservation that will be of interest to museum staff, restorers and experts in various fields (geologists, biologists, chemists, engineers, etc.) whose work involves problems of cultural heritage preservation. The book is interesting for everyone who is not indifferent to the history and preserving of the world culture.