Ломоно́сов
= Lomonosov
Until
1948 the city's name was "Oranienbaum", which means "orange
tree" in German (in modern German, the word is Orangenbaum). It was
initially applied to the palace complex, which had greenhouses for
exotic
plants. Its present name honors the scientist, poet and glassblower
Mikhail Lomonosov.
Oranienbaum
is a Russian royal residence, located on the Bay of
Finland west of St.Petersburg. Palace-ensemble and the city
center are UNESCO World Heritage Sites. The palace is
the only one of the famous palaces in the vicinity of St. Petersburg
that was not captured by the Germans during the Second World War.
In 1707,
four years after he founded
Saint Petersburg, Peter the Great gave the grounds near the seaside to
his right-hand man, Aleksandr Danilovich Menshikov. Menshikov
commissioned the architects Giovanni Mario Fontana and Gottfried
Shadel,
who built his residence, the Grand Menshikov Palace. The central part
of the Palace is connected by
two galleries with the two-domed Pavilions. The Lower
Garden, decorated with fountains and sculptures, and the Upper Garden
were laid out at the
same time. The Palace is located near the Lower Park, whose composite
axis is a channel leading to the sea.
In 1743,
Oranienbaum became the
summer residence of Grand Duke Peter Fedorovitch, the heir of Empress
Elizabeth (the future Emperor Peter III).
Over the last ten years of Elizabeth's reign, Bartolomeo Francesco
Rastrelli reconstructed the Grand Palace, adding beauty to its decor.
The city
was the birthplace of Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky (1882-1971),
a composer of modern classical music. Although he composed primitivist,
neo-classical and serial works, he is best known for three compositions
from his earlier, Russian period: L'Oiseau de feu ("The Firebird")
(1910), Petrushka (1911), and Le sacre du printemps ("The Rite of
Spring") (1913). These daring and innovative ballets practically
reinvented the genre.
If you are interested in hearing
Stravinsky's Firebird and The Rite of Spring while reading through this
blog, please use the following
link to BBC Radio's "Discovering Music" (you have to scroll down to
find Stravinsky's work): http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/discoveringmusic/audioarchive.shtml
With their bikes back in shape, the group
drove through
Lomonosov to visit the beautiful garden estates that made the city
famous. The city of Lomonosov is like the Russian
version of France's Versailles. 
Despite several flat tires and lots of
wind, the group cycled on to Petrodvorets (Peterhof), finding a cozy campsite right in the
backyard of the
Konstantinoysky
Palace - Better known as the ‘Palace of Putin’ (below) at the mouth of the
river Newa. How easy it sometimes is to cross a simple fence and how
much more beautiful the sunset always seems behind it...
