Museum Review: Three Temporary Exhibitions at the Peter and Paul Fortress

This review is going to rely a bit on "you're going to just have to believe me", as opposed to my normal method of "LOOK AT ALL THE SHINY STUFF".

The first time that Princess and I went to the Peter and Paul Fortress, we ended up hitting up three temporary exhibits. The main difference between these and the normal ones?

1) The magical student ID card only gets you a discount;

2) The exhibitions can be slightly shorter, but tend to delve further into a topic; and

3) The topic is either a) far more gruesome, or b) far more fanciful than any reasonable adult would want to go every time they went to this museum for free. 

Oh, and obviously,

4) These exhibitions are temporary.

Now, I did mention that these exhibits can be either far too gruesome, or far too fanciful. And the reason I describe it thusly is that two of the exhibitions that Princess and I saw were so gruesome, we couldn't bring ourselves to take pictures, and the other was so fanciful that I took pictures of EVERYTHING even though there was only a room and a half.

The first two: A history of torture in St. Petersburg (definitely a light, cheery subject), and Peter the Great's museum of genetic mutations (literally rooms of babies in jars).

The last?

HIDDEN DRAGONS.

Now, I don't know about you, but I love me some animatronic dragons. Add dragon-themed interactive games to the mix, and I'm as happy as a five year old with its parents' credit card in a candy story.

So, to give you a sense of how awesome the dragon-themed exhibition was (because, again, I do not have pictures of the other two, nor do I feel inclined to describe the different methods of torture in Russia/dead babies and the effects of deadly diseases), here is a link to the photo album. Yay shiny animatronic dragons!

Dragon Exhibition 

Now, the important thing: Would I recommend going to any of these exhibits?

Yes. Definitely. They were quite informative, and generally well-put together, though some exhibits within the exhibition were obviously meant or Russian audiences only.

Would I recommend going to two depressing ones in the same day?

Only if there are shiny dragons at the end of the tunnel.