Saint Petersburg Planetarium
Soviet-era star theater under a hidden twenty-five-metre dome, rebuilt from a fire-scarred former opera house.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to the Saint Petersburg Planetarium traces the building's life before it ever held a dome: a January 1912 fire that swept the stage of the People's House opera hall, built at the edge of Alexander Park after Prince Alexander Oldenburgsky won Tsar Nicholas II's backing, and the nights when bass Feodor Chaliapin sang there. It follows the hall through the siege of Leningrad, when a German shell left it half-ruined for years afterward. Listen for the line of that old stage still said to run beneath where you stand.
This audio guide was created using AI.
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