Thanks, Empress E.

In this last month, I've been massively exploring, taking pictures, slipping and sliding on ice, and getting to know more about my family and friends here. But I've also been going to school. Here, to be exact. Also known as the "Smolny Institute" within St. Petersburg State University. I'm not sure what I did in my relatively short life to deserve this, but I am forever grateful. The cathedral (actually a concert hall) and the surrounding complex was built by Empress Elizabeth I as a nunnery, having herself a desire to enter the convent in her old age (though she never got around to it). We can thank Bartolomeo Rastrelli for the crazy color pallet and extravagance of design. Rastrelli was an Italian architect Elizabeth recruited to create her Winter Palace, now the Hermitage Museum. Elizabeth continued in the footsteps of her father, Peter the Great, in westernizing Russia, especially by inviting European artists, engineers, architects, and thinkers to Russia. Eventually, the Smolny non-convent morphed into a center of education for noble young ladies in the late 18th century. Famous Russian painter, Dmitri Levitsky, depicted many of these students in a series of portraits entitled, "Smolianki"

On our first night in St. Petersburg, we got a drive-by glimpse of Smolny Cathedral. The program directors told us that this was the entrance to our university and our jaws dropped like kids in a candy shop. We have yet to close our mouths.