Travel Notes

Garden to Reopen

Renovation mostly historical

This summer, St. Petersburg will reopen its famous Summer Garden, the oldest park in the city Peter the Great founded in 1703. The park has been closed to the public for over two years while undergoing extensive reconstruction, causing plenty of contentious debate in Russia’s second city.

The scope of the changes to the romantic park is unclear. Officials have stated that the project has aimed to recreate the park’s original plan, resurrecting paths that date to the Petrine era. Eight fountains have been added, and old or dying trees have been replaced. The park’s famous sculptures were moved to a museum and replaced with replicas.

The original reconstruction plan included resurrecting a hedge maze near the Moika embankment, but the architects balked, worried that the maze would cause a scandal among Petersburgers, who are used to the way the park has been in recent memory.

Moscow Moderne

Art gets a boost

Moscow will latch onto a current boom by building a brand new modern art museum, the first of its kind in a city known for its Tretyakov Gallery and Pushkin Museum. The new center will expand Moscow’s current Center for Modern Art (ncca.ru), created in the early 2000s as an analogue to Paris’ Pompidou Center, to bring together art, lectures and learning.

The center was offered a giant construction site just east of city center, where once the Basmanny Market stood (that market infamously collapsed in 2006, killing over 60 people). The NCCA, though it is state-funded, is known for supporting controversial artists, such as the Voina art group.

To Tula for Guns

Museum moves

Tula’s famous Museum of Weaponry has finally moved from its cramped quarters in a former cathedral in the city’s kremlin to a new building. Construction on the new building lasted more than a decade, plagued by budgetary scandals.

The five-story museum will have space for the institution’s vast collections, which include both Russian and foreign arms, and even a horseshoed flea.* Tula, located 193 kilometers south of Moscow, is the historic heart of Russia’s weapons industry. Peter the Great founded a factory there in 1712, and within a few decades the city became Eastern Europe’s largest center for armament production. In more recent history, that same factory has produced grenade launchers and rockets that are exported by the Russian military. Tula, of course, is also known for its samovar production and for its association with Lev Tolstoy.

Work on Baikal

Volunteer opportunities in Siberia

The Great Baikal Trail, a project building environmental trails circumnavigating Lake Baikal, is looking for volunteers for summer work camps. The trail network transits nature reserves and tribal lands in the Lake Baikal basin wilderness.

This summer’s projects include restoring a traditional wooden water mill, and building a sustainable trail to a cave that was a prehistoric site. GBT arranges visa support, but volunteers must cover their own expenses while in the work camp. For more information visit greatbaikaltrail.org.

For an even tougher and more remote volunteer experience, explore options at Kamchatka Peninsula’s Kronotsky Reserve. Volunteers can live for a month among the bears and volcanoes in the beautiful Valley of the Geysers – provided they can help with infrastructure rebuilding and feel comfortable living in spartan conditions. [kronoki.ru]

Museum Watch

iMacs and Stalin’s legacy

A private museum devoted exclusively to Apple computers and gadgets has opened in Moscow. Its collection is drawn from that of engineer Andrei Antonov, who has been buying Apple products since 1977, starting with the first Apple II. The antiquated devices are on display every weekend near Taganka (Pestovsky pereulok 16/1, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Entrance: Free.)

Meanwhile, the Georgian town of Gori, birthplace of Stalin and home to a museum dedicated to the dictator since the 1930s, will transform the site “into a museum of Stalinism, which will comprehensively and objectively inform visitors about all important events of the Stalin period.” The new museum will be supported by the Culture Ministry and be open to outside researchers from around the world.

* In homage to the famous story “Lefty,” by Nikolai Leskov, in which a brilliant craftsman proves his mettle by shoeing a flea.