St Petersburg is where thousands of Russian school leavers flock every June for spectacular end-of-school celebrations. The young crowd bid their alma maters farewell with an exceptional and dazzling firework display.
The St Pete skies lit up for around 35,000 high-school graduates from all over Russia. Around 800,000 people in total were at the festival, a source in security forces said.
The festive occasion carried on until dawn, with concerts, a multimedia show and the appearance of a ship, in fact an old-time brigantine, with scarlet sails.
The singers who performed were chosen by high school students’ votes.
Some 1,800 policemen were responsible for security at the festival.
The weather was kind to the participants. It’s usually quite unpredictable and can be chilly in St. Petersburg, but this year – the festival’s 12th – turned out to be clear and quite warm.
The event was first held back in 1968, but the tradition was interrupted, and the festival was restored in 2002. Currently, it’s on the World Event tourism list, and is recommended to tourists in 20 European countries.
This year, new sails were made for the brigantine using thousands of meters of scarlet-colored textile.
The boat called ‘The Kronor’ is a faithful copy of the same vessel dating back to 1857.