Russian+Words+6

=Weather words....=

Winter Ice palaces in St Petersburg...
Winters in St Petersburg are COLD! Temperatures often fall below -60°C. Stunning Ice palaces and sculptures are built over the winter and stay frozen until March. St Petersburg is the birthplace of Snow Art in Russia. The tradition goes back to Empress Anna Ioanovna's first Ice Palace, built in the exceptionlly cold winter of 1739-40, to celebrate Russia's victory over Turkey.
 * [[image:russi_ice_palace9.jpg width="255" height="198"]] || [[image:russia_ice_palace_7.jpg width="250" height="185"]] || [[image:russia_ice_palace_6.jpg width="260" height="191"]] ||
 * [[image:russia_ice_palace_5.jpg width="264" height="200"]] || [[image:russia_ice_palace_4.jpg width="255" height="201"]] || [[image:russia_ice.jpg width="266" height="192"]] ||
 * [[image:russia_ice_palace_2.jpg width="270" height="230"]] || [[image:russia_ice_palace3.jpg width="267" height="238"]] || [[image:russia_ice_palace.jpg width="273" height="225"]] ||

The First Ice Palace...
In 1739 to celebrate Russia's victory over Turkey, Empress Anna ordered a spectacular palace of ice to be built in St Petersburg. Huge blocks of ice were fused together with water. The ice garden was filled with ice trees, birds, sculptures and even an ice elephant which spewed water and surrounded by ice walls and ice cannons. Inside was filled with ice furniture including an ice bed with ice mattress and ice pillows, a translucent ice clock and even ice spoons and forks. Anna Ioannovana, Empress of Russia 1693-1740. Daughter of Tsar Ivan V, Peter the Great's half-brother. || The wedding of old Prince Golitsyn in the first Ice Palace in 1739. The Prince and his new wife are sitting shivering on the Ice Throne as the wedding procession celebrates riotously around them. || Empress Anna was mean and cruel towards any one who she disliked. She forced old Prince Goytsyn to become a court jester and marry an elderly maid. For their Wedding Day she dressed them as clowns and put them on elephants and had them married in the freezing Ice Palace.She filled the guest list with as many "undesirables" as she could find, as well as strangely dressed people from tribes in Siberia. She forced the old prince and his new wife to spend their wedding night naked and under guard, on the frozen bed in the Ice Palace!
 * [[image:ruusia_anna.jpg width="222" height="306"]]