Wednesday Walk around the Smolny Cathedral

Greetings, friends! This time I got out for a walk with Smolny Garden and decided to walk around the Smolny Cathedral. Smolny Cathedral is the main temple of the Smolny Monastery. Around the Smolny Cathedral are other monastery buildings, small churches and cell blocks. The corner towers are connected by a stone fence.

The whole ensemble of buildings of the Smolny Monastery is in the same style, but you can appreciate it in full only if you order a helicopter tour and see all the buildings from above. However, there is a more budget-friendly way to see the architectural ensemble from the top - there is a viewing platform on one of the towers. And there is another unusual way to see the whole ensemble, not in its modern form, but as it was conceived by the famous architect Rastrelli. The wooden model is kept in the Museum of the Academy of Arts.

I started my walk from the garden side, and at the beginning I had to walk quite a long way along the stone fence and outbuildings to approach the entrance to the Smolny Cathedral. The day was clear, sunny. The lawns were pleasing to the eye with fresh green grass. There was not even a memory of the recent snowfall. I am amazed every time I see such weather surprises in April. One day you take off your jacket and jumper while walking because you're getting too hot. Then the next day you head to the ski lodge for a ski trip through a suburban park - it snowed enough overnight!

It's interesting how the trees guess the time to wake up from their winter hibernation. There is no way they should succumb to weather provocations lest they die. Perhaps it is a matter of inertia? The soil warms up quite slowly, and one or two days of warmth is not enough for it. Or are the trees orientated by the length of the day? The length of a sunny day is a more stable indicator than the weather.

The Smolny Monastery is known not as a church institution, but as an educational institution. It was here in the second half of the XVIII century that the Smolny Institute for Noble Maidens, the first educational institution for women in Russia, was located. At the beginning of its existence the institution had the status of a school, and in the 19th century it became an institute and allowed women to receive higher education.

Now Smolny Cathedral is an Orthodox church, and the buildings around the perimeter belong to St. Petersburg University, where one of the university faculties is located. In front of the entrance to the cathedral there is a bell, it gives a thick and strong sound. The fence of the monastery cast clear shadows, and I stopped several times to capture this light and shadow pattern.

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Smartphone	Google Pixel 3a
Location	Saint Petersburg, Russia

This is my entry for the #WednesdayWalk challenge by @tattoodjay.