City Breaks

Bienvenue! Welcome to Episode 1 of City Breaks Toulouse. This opening podcast will give you an overview of the city, historically, geographically and culturally and an idea of the material to be covered in each of the remaining 8 episodes. We hope that after listening to it, you’ll be looking forward to the rest of the series and maybe also keen get down to planning a visit, knowing that what you...

For the final episode in the series, we are 'leaving' St Petersburg to discover Soviet era Leningrad through the work of three very different authors. First, the poet Anna Akhmatova, whose writing was largely banned, but whose very Russian, free-spirited poetry made her a symbol of opposition to the state. Then Helen Dunmore, whose two novels The Siege and Betrayal are set in 1940s and 50s Leningr...

A look at 19th century St Petersburg through the eyes of 3 authors: Gogol, Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. Hear how a long-desired new overcoat caused the demise of the humble clerk Akaky Akakievich, then wander the streets of the city following an escaped body part in another Gogol story, the absurdist The Nose. Learn of St Petersburg's glittering social life, described in War and Peace, and find out wh...

The Father of Russian Literature, Alexander Pushkin, led a colourful life of semi-debauchery in St Petersburg, and set some of his best-loved works there. Biographical details, including  his schooldays at the city’s elite Lycée and his dramatic demise in a duel at the age of only 37, are followed by a review of two of his best known poems, which focus closely on St Petersburg. Then we look at his...

Art lovers flock to St Petersburg's wonderful and extensive collections in the Hermitage and of course we will look at some of the highlights to be found there. But first, a nod to the architectural styles to be found in the city, from the glorious baroque palaces of 18th century St Petersburg, via the much more Russian-influenced design of the Church on the Spilled Blood, to the designs favoured...

Surely ballet is one of the first things you think of when it comes to St Petersburg. Hear a brief history, beginning with the 'twelve little girls' invited in 1738 by the Empress Anna to join the city's first ballet school, held in the Winter Palace attic. Find out more about the 19th and early 20th centuries, when many of the great Russian ballets were first seen and dancers like Vaslav Nijinsky...

Hear about some of St Petersburg's many musical connections, with potted biographies of composers from Glinka, often known as the father of Russian music, to Shostakovich, via, of course, Tchaikovsky. And not forgetting Rubinstein, whose Russian Musical Society did so much to put St Petersburg on the musical map or Stravinsky, whose 'Rite of Spring' delighted and outraged audiences in equal measur...

St Petersburg's haunting Memorial to the Defenders of Leningrad recalls the dreadful 900 day long blockade of the city by German troops during the Second World War. Supplies to the city were so ruthlessly cut off that the population was starved and 800,000 people lost their lives. This episode provides a little history, some extracts from the diary of teenager Lena Mukhina who lived through it and...

What happened in St Petersburg after the 1917 Revolution and where can you find traces of the Soviet era in the city today?  After a little history, we visit three sites with much to tell: the terrifying Trubetskoy Bastion Prison, the State Museum of Political History and the former home of the dissident poet Anna Akhmatova.  After a look at metro stations designed in the 1950s as ‘Palaces of the...

First, some ideas on the increasing demands for reform which played out through the 18th and 19th centuries in St Petersburg, including the Decembrist revolt of 1825 and the assassination of Emperor Alexander II in 1881. Then, a look at end-of-an-era St Petersburg in the early years of the 20th century, especially the Bloody Sunday massacre of 1905 and the uprising in February 2017, which led to t...

The two city-centre palaces featured in this episode both tell us more about the end of the Romanov dynasty, albeit in very different ways. The Shuvalov Palace, a former glittering hub for St Petersburg's aristocracy, is today the home of a museum housing many artistic treasures, including a collection of Fabergé eggs, which remind the visitor of the luxury enjoyed by the last imperial Romanov fam...

The Alexander Palace was the family home of choice for a number of Tsars, even if they hosted big public events in the swankier Catherine Palace across the park. Nicholas II, the last Emperor, was born here, and made it a comfortable family home for his wife and 5 children, until they were taken away in the middle of the night in July 1917 and sent to their deaths in Siberia. There are reminders o...

This episode tours the many waterways of St Petersburg, looking first at some of the canals and bridges and then taking a stroll along the Neva, up the Palace Embankment, starting at St Isaac's Cathedral, whose gleaming dome soars above the city 'like a shining mitre'. The walk continues past the Winter Palace whose 1000+ rooms were once the home of imperial families, but which is now better known...

Nevsky Prospekt 'is Petersburg' according to Gogol, writing in the 1830s, and this long road is still today the backbone of the city. We explore it, stopping off at three of its best-known buildings, starting with the Alexander Nevsky Monastery, burial ground of Dostoyevsky and Tchaikovsky. Then it’s on to the Cathedral of Our Lady of Kazan, scene of so many imperial funerals and of the Te Deum he...

Just as splendid as Peterhof, the Catherine Palace is St Petersburg's other dazzling summer residence, built as a surprise for Peter the Great by his wife Catherine on land he had gifted to her. This episode tells the story of the two great empresses who made it their own, starting with Elizabeth, daughter of Peter and Catherine and moving on to her niece-in-law, another Catherine, who succeeded t...

Peter the Great's legacy is, of course, the whole of the city of St Petersburg. But this episode focuses on some of the buildings most closely associated with him, such as the Peter and Paul Fortress, begun as a citadel, and later the site of the city's most feared prison. Also within the walls is the beautiful Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul, whose foundation stone was laid by Peter himself an...

St Petersburg Episode 02 Peter the Great The building of the beautiful city of St Petersburg at the dawn of the 18th century was all down to the willpower of one man: Peter the great. Hear how he drove tens of thousands of serfs and prisoners of war to dig into marshland on the banks of the River Neva and plant the foundations of his dream city: an elegant array of palaces and cathedrals set to ri...

St Petersburg Episode 01 Introduction Dobro pozhalovat!  Welcome to episode 1 of City Breaks St Petersburg. This opening podcast will give you an overview of the city, historically, geographically and culturally and an idea of the material to be covered in each of the remaining 16 episodes. We hope that after listening to it, you’ll be looking forward to the rest of the series and maybe also keen...

Munich Episode 14 World Capital of Beer First, a brief history of brewing in Munich, from its beginnings in medieval monasteries, through royal patronage, the 19th century development of the craft on an industrial scale and, finally, the development of the 6 big breweries. Find out which brewery was started for his own personal use by a Wittelsbach monarch and why Löwenbräu has a lion as its symbo...

Munich Episode 13 Enjoying the food in Munich This episode is devoted to all things culinary in Munich, including Kaffee und Kuchen (coffee and cake) and the Viktualienmarkt,(food market) which is the gathering place for anyone wanting to buy local produce or enjoy Bavarian snacks like Weisssurst with mustard. Descriptions follow of some of Munich's best-known dishes, including hearty meat-based m...

Munich Episode 12 Sport First, a brief history of Munich's two great football clubs, Bayern Munich and TSV 1860, and the grand Allianz Arena, home to both teams. Hear too about the 1958 Munich Air Disaster, which cost the lives of over 20 people, including 8 Manchester United players and the 1972 Olympics, seen as a way for post-war West Germany to showcase its splendours to the rest of the world....

Munich Episode 11 Music and Literature First, hear what Wagner, Mahler and Richard Strauss did in Munich and where you can still find traces of them today, followed by a rundown of the city's current music scene, from Bavarian folk music to classical. Learn about the 'Golden Age' in Munich, from the late 19th to the early 20th century, with its café culture and iconic characters. Literary Munich i...

Munich Episode 10 Art A brief history of art in Munich and information on its main art galleries and what to look out for there. Find out about works by Albrecht Dürer, Hams Holbein, the German Romantics like Caspar David Friedrich and the Blue Rider artists such as Wassily Kandinsy and Paul Klee. Hear too about propaganda art and the so-called 'degenerate art' of the Nazi period, which saw Hitler...

Munich Episode 09 Standing up to Hitler Hear about some of the Munich citizens who spoke out against Hitler, often with fatal consequences: the journalist Fritz Gerlich and churchmen Alfred Delp and Rupert Mayer. Discover too where, in today’s Munich, you can find traces of them still. More in-depth coverage is then given to the White Rose Resistance Group, Munich students led by Hans and Sophie S...

Munich Episode 08 Munich and World War 2 Episode 8 focuses first on places in Munich with connections to World War 2, such as the Stadtmuseum,the Dokumentationszentrum on Königsplatz, the Jewish Museum and the Dachau memorial site. Mention is made of two fictional works of great relevance; Robert Harris's Munich, a fictional account of the Munich agreement in 1938 and Markus Zusak's novel The Book...