About Saint Petersburg

Saint Petersburg stands in the delta of the Neva, on the shores of the Gulf of Finland, and is considered Russia’s second capital — by its status as a federal city, by its size, and by its cultural weight. About 5.65 million people live here; only Moscow has more. The city stretches almost 90 kilometres from north to south, spreads across 42 islands, and any walk through the centre inevitably runs into water: the Neva, the Bolshaya and Malaya Nevka, the Fontanka, the Moyka, the Griboyedov Canal. There is so much water that Petersburg is sometimes called the Venice of the North, though the resemblance lies more in the density of bridges — the city has more than 800 of them.

The image of Petersburg rests on three things: the regular 18th–19th-century urban fabric, the granite embankments, and the museums. Within a radius of three to four kilometres from Palace Square sits almost the entire “must-see programme” — the Hermitage, Saint Isaac’s Cathedral, the Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood, the Kazan Cathedral, the Russian Museum, the Peter and Paul Fortress. It is easy to walk between them; the distances are short — from the Winter Palace to the Savior on Spilled Blood along the Griboyedov Canal is about a kilometre. Beyond the centre begin the imperial suburbs — Peterhof, Pushkin, Pavlovsk, Gatchina — and Kronstadt on Kotlin Island.

The city was founded by Peter the Great in May 1703 and that same year became the empire’s construction site. In 1712 Peter moved the capital here from Moscow, and for almost two hundred years — until 1918 — Petersburg remained the first city of Russia: it received embassies, built palaces, opened the Academy of Sciences, the first Russian public museum, the first university. The 20th century treated it harshly: Petrograd, Leningrad, the 872-day siege, the return of the historical name in 1991. The city’s history is large and complex, and a separate page on the portal is devoted to it; here it is enough to say that the Petersburg identity took shape precisely at the seam between the imperial sweep of the 18th–19th centuries and the dramatic 20th.

How the city is laid out

The centre of Petersburg is the Admiralteysky and Tsentralny districts, the triangle between the Neva, the Fontanka, and Nevsky Prospekt. Nevsky runs from the Admiralty to Vosstaniya Square for 4.5 kilometres and gathers up almost all the main addresses: the Kazan Cathedral, Gostiny Dvor, the Anichkov Bridge, the House of Books. To the north of it lies Arts Square with the Mikhailovsky Palace and the Russian Museum; to the south — Sennaya Square and the embankments of the Moyka and the Fontanka. Here too are the Hermitage, Palace Square, the Alexander Column, and the General Staff Building.

Across the Neva from the centre is Vasilyevsky Island, laid out on a regular grid of numbered “lines.” The Spit with the Rostral Columns, the Kunstkamera, the Zoological Museum, the building of the Twelve Collegia, the Stock Exchange — Peter’s idea of a “new capital on new principles” reads precisely from here. Further north lies the Petrogradskaya Side: the Peter and Paul Fortress with its cathedral and the Romanov tomb, the Cathedral Mosque, Peter the Great’s Cabin, the Northern Art Nouveau quarters along Kamennoostrovsky Prospekt. Further still — Krestovsky, Kamenny, and Yelagin Islands, a green belt of parks, the Central Park of Culture and Leisure, the Gazprom Arena, and the 300th Anniversary Park.

The northern shore of the Gulf of Finland is the Kurortny District: Sestroretsk, Zelenogorsk, Repino, Komarovo, 30–50 kilometres from the centre, with dunes, pines, and sanatoriums. People come here “to the dacha,” to spas, and to the beaches — swimming is cool even in July, but the air and the pines do their work. The imperial suburbs — Peterhof, Pushkin, Pavlovsk, Gatchina, Oranienbaum, Kronstadt — are formally not districts of the city, but logically they are part of the Petersburg itinerary: each one is a separate half-day or full-day trip.

Economically, Petersburg is a major port (the Big Port and the passenger Marine Façade on Vasilyevsky), a scientific and educational centre (Saint Petersburg State University, the Polytechnic, the Mining University, the Academy of Arts), as well as shipbuilding, mechanical engineering, automotive assembly, and a strong IT sector. But for a visitor something else matters more: the city lives off its cultural economy — around 200 museums, dozens of theatres, the main stages being the Mariinsky, the Mikhailovsky, the Alexandrinsky, and the Bolshoi Drama Theatre. Tourism is a separate industry with a year-round flow and seasonal peaks.

What to see

The Hermitage is Russia’s main museum and one of the largest in the world: founded by Catherine the Great in 1764, it occupies six buildings of the complex around the Winter Palace, and the collection holds more than three million items. Plan four to five hours for a single proper visit, and even that is enough only for the main halls. Next door, across Palace Square, is the General Staff Building with its Impressionists and Post-Impressionists in the east wing.

The Peter and Paul Fortress is the city’s first structure, founded on 27 May 1703. Inside are the Peter and Paul Cathedral with the tomb of the Romanov dynasty, the prison of the Trubetskoy Bastion, and the Mint. At noon a cannon fires from the Naryshkin Bastion — a tradition kept up since the 18th century. Saint Isaac’s Cathedral is Europe’s third-tallest domed church, 101.5 metres high, built over 40 years (1818–1858) to a design by Auguste de Montferrand; from its observation colonnade the entire centre is visible. The Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood, raised on the spot where Alexander II was mortally wounded in 1881, is one of the world’s largest collections of mosaics — 7,065 square metres of mosaics inside. The Kazan Cathedral, with its colonnade of 96 columns in the spirit of Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome, was consecrated in 1811 and holds the tomb of Kutuzov.

The Russian Museum in the Mikhailovsky Palace is the first state collection of Russian art, opened in 1898: the largest collection of works by Aivazovsky, Repin, Bryullov, and Surikov. The Kunstkamera is Russia’s first public museum, founded by Peter the Great in 1714; it is known for its anatomical collection and for the tower that became the symbol of the Spit of Vasilyevsky Island. Among the less obvious: the Ethnographic Museum next to the Russian Museum, the Fabergé Museum on the Fontanka, the Anna Akhmatova Museum at the Fountain House, and the Museum of the Siege of Leningrad.

The imperial suburbs are a separate chapter. Peterhof, with the Grand Palace, the Lower Park, and more than 150 fountains that run without pumps on a gravity-fed system (the season runs from late April to mid-October). Tsarskoye Selo in Pushkin: the 325-metre blue façade of the Catherine Palace, the restored Amber Room, the Lyceum where Alexander Pushkin studied. Pavlovsk with its palace and landscape park of about 600 hectares — one of the largest English-style parks in Europe. Gatchina with the Grand Palace and an underground passage to Silver Lake. Kronstadt with the Naval Cathedral of Saint Nicholas (consecrated in 1913) and the forts in the Gulf of Finland.

Transport and seasons

Getting to Petersburg means Pulkovo (LED), the city’s only airport, 17 kilometres from the centre. From Moscow, the fastest option is the Sapsan from Leningradsky Station: about four hours to Moskovsky Station on Vosstaniya Square. In addition to Moskovsky, the city has four more stations — Finlyandsky, Vitebsky, Baltiysky, Ladozhsky — each serving different directions, including suburban trains: to Peterhof from Baltiysky, to Pushkin and Pavlovsk from Vitebsky.

Inside the city there is the metro, opened in 1955: five lines, 72 stations, one of the deepest in the world. The Podorozhnik card gives a discount compared with a single-use token. In the centre it is more convenient to walk — the distances are short, and surface transport gets stuck in traffic. From April to October boats run along the Neva, the Moyka, the Fontanka, and the Griboyedov Canal — a one-hour cruise from the piers by the Savior on Spilled Blood or the Anichkov Bridge shows the city from the angle it was built for. In summer a Meteor hydrofoil runs to Peterhof from the Admiralty Embankment — 30–40 minutes by water.

The main transport peculiarity is the raising of the bridges. The navigation season runs roughly from mid-April to mid-November; the key bridges are raised from 01:10–01:25 until 04:55–05:00 — a rhythm that taxi drivers and late-night walks both adjust to. The schedule changes from day to day, and it is worth checking before a trip.

The seasonality here is sharp. Summer is the peak: the median daytime temperature is +21…+22 °C, the White Nights run roughly from 25 May to 16 July, when there is almost no proper darkness. During these weeks comes Scarlet Sails — the school-leavers’ celebration with a frigate on the Neva and fireworks, usually in the second half of June. Hotel prices are at their highest then. Autumn is a strong museum season, with golden foliage in the suburban parks and noticeably more affordable accommodation. Winter is the theatre season: the Mariinsky, the Mikhailovsky, the Alexandrinsky; the Hermitage without queues; Christmas markets in December. Spring is unstable — snow, slush, changeable weather — but in April and May the smelt is running, with its recognisable cucumber smell, and that is a city ritual of its own.

Atmosphere and who it suits

Petersburg is a city of slow looking. What works here is not a “top-10 in a day,” but a long walk with stops: embankment, bridge, courtyard well, coffee, museum, another embankment. It was built for that rhythm — a regular grid of avenues, vistas that end in spires and domes, granite, cast iron, water. An overcast sky suits it as well as sunshine does, and that is a rare quality: equal photogenic appeal in any weather.

People come here first of all for history, art, and architecture — for the museums, palaces, theatres, and that particular Leningrad-Petersburg mood that runs through literature from Gogol and Dostoevsky to Brodsky. Young couples come for the White Nights and the raising of the bridges; parents for the suburbs with their fountains and parks; solo travellers for the density of bookshops, the bars on Rubinshteyna Street, the cafés on the Petrogradskaya Side, and routes without a rigid plan. The catalogue of Petersburg hotels currently lists 1,448 hotels — from the premium Trezini Palace and Grand Hotel Moika 22 within walking distance of the Hermitage to aparthotels on the Petrogradskaya Side and Vasilyevsky Island — and for almost any budget there is a spot within walking distance of the centre.

The city forgives a great deal, but not one thing — haste. If the trip is short, it is better to choose a single theme — a museum marathon, or the White Nights, or the suburbs — and go through it calmly than to try to take in everything. Petersburg needs time; it answers in kind.