Palace Bridge

Stand still for a moment and feel it. The deck under your feet carries a faint tremor every time a bus rolls past. Below the railings the Neva moves fast and dark, wider than most rivers in most cities. The wind comes straight off the water, cold even in summer. Gulls hang in it without moving their wings. This is Palace Bridge, and it is one of the few places in Saint Petersburg where you can stand in the middle of the river and see the whole city open around you.

Turn to face the bank with the long green and white facade. That is the Winter Palace, once the main residence of the Russian emperors and now part of the Hermitage Museum. The bridge lands almost at its feet, which is how it got its name. Behind the palace lies Palace Square. To your left along the same bank, a slim golden spire rises above the trees. That spire crowns the Admiralty, the old naval headquarters that the city grew around.

Now turn the other way, towards Vasilyevsky Island. Here the island ends in a sharp point that locals call the Strelka, a word that means something like the little arrow. Two tall red columns stand on the point, studded with the carved prows of ships. These are the Rostral Columns. Between them sits the old Stock Exchange, built like a Greek temple. A little to the left you can see the Kunstkamera, with its distinctive green and white tower, the city's first museum.

For a long time there was no permanent bridge here at all. The Neva is wide, deep and powerful, and in winter it freezes hard. Through much of the nineteenth century people crossed on a floating bridge made of pontoons. Each spring and autumn, as the ice moved, it had to be taken apart and put back together. It was slow, awkward and dangerous. The city needed something better between its two most important banks.

Work on the bridge you are standing on began in the early twentieth century, shortly before the First World War. The war made everything harder. Steel was scarce, workers were called away, and the budget was strained. Still, the bridge opened to traffic in 1916, just a year before the revolution changed the country completely. Many of the finishing touches were never completed at the time. For years the bridge carried simple wooden railings, which looked plain against the palaces around it.

Here is the first surprise. The cast iron railings you see today did not arrive until the late 1930s, more than twenty years after the bridge opened. Other decorative plans from the original design were simply dropped. So the bridge is, in a quiet way, unfinished. Look closely at the railings and you will see their simple repeating pattern. It is calm and practical rather than ornate, which suits a structure built in such uncertain times.

Now the most famous thing about this bridge. It opens. The central section is made of two great steel leaves that lift upwards, one towards each bank, until they stand almost upright against the sky. This kind of drawbridge is called a bascule bridge, after a French word for a seesaw. Heavy counterweights hidden inside the supports balance the leaves, so the machinery can raise enormous weight with surprising ease.

Why open a bridge at all? Because the Neva is not only a river. It is a shipping route linking the Baltic Sea with lakes, canals and rivers deep inside Russia. Cargo ships and tankers need a clear channel. During the warmer months, when the river is free of ice, the bridges of the city open at night, one after another, so that long lines of vessels can pass through. In the morning the leaves come down again, and traffic returns.

This creates a second surprise, and a very practical one. When the bridges are up, Vasilyevsky Island is cut off from the city centre by road for several hours. Locals know this well. Taxi drivers watch the clock. People leaving a late dinner on the wrong side of the river sometimes run for the bridge, or simply accept a long night out. More than one Petersburg love story, people say, began with two people stuck on the same bank.

The opening itself has become a nightly ritual. On summer nights crowds gather along the embankments, on the Strelka and by the palace, to watch the leaves rise. Boats wait on the water with their lights on. The bridge is lit from below, and the raised steel glows against the dark river. On some summer nights the opening is also accompanied by music, and the atmosphere feels close to a concert. Then, slowly, the ships begin to move through.

The best season for this is the time of the White Nights, around late spring and early summer. Saint Petersburg sits so far north that the sun barely sets in June. The sky stays a pale silver blue even after midnight. Watching Palace Bridge open under that strange half light is something many residents still go out to see, year after year. It is also when the city holds its great graduation celebration, with a ship under scarlet sails passing along this stretch of river.

The bridge has been repaired and rebuilt several times over the past century. Traffic grew far beyond anything its builders imagined, and the river, the ice and the salt air are hard on steel. Engineers have replaced and strengthened large parts of the structure, while keeping its familiar outline. So the bridge you walk on today is partly new and partly old, but its shape against the river is the same one Petersburgers have known for generations.

Before you move on, take one more slow look around. Notice how low the city sits on the water, with almost no hills and very few tall buildings. Notice the colours on both banks, the green of the palace, the red of the columns, the pale stone of the Exchange. Listen for the hollow sound of the deck under passing wheels. And as you step off the bridge, glance back once. Somewhere beneath you, the machinery is waiting for the night.