Sights—Beautiful churches (Kazan Cathedral, Smolny Cathedral, Church on the Spilled Blood, St. Isaac's Cathedral and Alexander Nevsky Monastery); the Peter and Paul Fortress; Palace Square (Dvortsovaya Ploshchad); the Summer Garden; a river or channel cruise for a different perspective of the city.
Museums—Masterworks of European painting at the Hermitage; centuries of Russian art at the Russian Museum; the amassed deformities of nature at the Kunstkamera.
Memorable Meals—Fresh oysters flown in from France at Dvorianskoye Gnezdo; hefty portions of good Russian cuisine at 1913 and Palkin; catching your own dinner at Russkaya Rybalka; a gorgeous view from Aquarel—a floating fusion restaurant-platform.
Late Night—A mug of freshly brewed beer at Tinkoff; Russian rockabilly bands at Money Honey; dancing in Russia's hippest bomb shelter at Griboyedov; listening to the jazz at JFC Jazz Club; a stroll at 2 am to watch the drawbridges open during the White Nights; Dacha bar for a drink outside or dancing inside.
Walks—Window-shopping on Nevsky Prospekt; strolling along the picturesque banks of the Neva River and the roofs of the city center; exploring the stunning grounds of the czarist summer palaces and gardens in the suburbs of St. Petersburg; enjoying the parks and 19th-century cottages on the Kamenny and Yelagin islands; a walk through the empire of fountains in Peterhof.
Especially for Kids—Military grandeur along the decks of the Aurora battleship; paddleboats at the summer palaces; the huge amusement park on Krestovsky Island.
St. Petersburg is as far north as Seward, Alaska, and is more populous than any city at that latitude. It experiences White Nights during the summer when the north pole is tilted closest to the sun, meaning that St. Petersburg only has a few hours of darkness a day in the summer months.
The city rests on the banks of the Gulf of Finland, an inlet of the Baltic Sea. The many fingers of the Neva River run through the city's heart, cutting St. Petersburg into about 60 islands. Nevsky Prospekt, Russia's most famous street, divides the city's main landmass in half from east to west and is lined with hotels, tourist attractions and restaurants. Just across the Neva from mainland St. Petersburg are Vasilievsky Island and another island colloquially called the "Petrograd Side" of the city (where Peter the Great originally founded St. Petersburg). Both islands contain interesting sightseeing attractions and are easily accessible by bridges.
St. Petersburg was founded by progressive-minded Czar Peter the Great in 1703. But the founding of St. Petersburg wasn't easy. More than 300,000 prisoners and conscripts died leveling hills, draining marshes and building ornate baroque palaces. Peter made the new city the capital of Russia and persuaded nobles from Moscow to relocate there. The city entered a building boom under Czarinas Elizabeth and Catherine the Second (the Great) and Czar Alexander I, giving St. Petersburg many of its most famous buildings. It was during this period, 1741-1825, that the city became one of the most grandiose capitals in all of Europe.
Alexander II's emancipation of the serfs and his industrialization policy brought huge numbers of people into St. Petersburg during the late 1800s. However, poor conditions for the lower classes contributed to widespread discontent. When troops fired upon a peaceful demonstration of workers in Palace Square—a day later known as Bloody Sunday—the 1905 Revolution was under way. Czar Nicholas II finally appeased the working class with the signing of the October Manifesto, which gave birth to the first-ever Parliament in Russia—the State Duma.
With the outbreak of World War I in 1914, St. Petersburg changed its name to the more Russian Petrograd. In 1917, the city was again the hub of revolution. A combination of wartime grievances and social unrest led to the Bolsheviks' seizure of power. Petrograd gave up the seat of government to Moscow in its wake. After the death of Russia's first socialist leader, Vladimir Lenin, in 1924, the city was renamed Leningrad.
During World War II, German forces laid siege to Leningrad in September 1941. The city was completely blockaded for three years, and more than a million people died, many of starvation. The city was rebuilt after the war and gradually regained its position as the cultural capital of Russia. The city restored its name to St. Petersburg in the early 1990s and retains that designation to this day. Vladimir Putin, who was elected president of Russia in 2000 and lived in St. Petersburg most of his life, has worked to boost the city's profile. He continues to meet with major heads of state there and refurbished an extravagant palace into one of his residences. A large number of palaces, historic buildings and embankments were reconstructed (most of them only from the outside) in honor of the city's 300th anniversary in 2003, more and more restaurants and services have opened, and a few new museums have appeared in the city as St. Petersburg becomes more tourist-friendly.
St. Petersburg is a very young city by European standards, as it is just slightly more than 300 years old. It is one of two cities in Europe that have never been captured by an enemy during a war or seceded as part of a treaty. The other is Reykjavik, Iceland.
Though Russian and Soviet history teaches that St. Petersburg was nothing but a swamp before Peter the Great founded the city in 1703, it was actually already inhabited by the Ingrians, a race linked to Finns who traded with Dutch traders sailing the Baltic Sea. There was also a Swedish fortress called Nyenskans, built in 1611, located at the mouth of the Neva River (across the river from where Smolny Cathedral stands today). It was sacked and destroyed by Alexander Nevsky, a knight who came up from Novgorod and led the Russians to victory over the Swedes. This land moved back and forth between Sweden and Russia several times.
The 900-day Siege of Leningrad is perhaps the darkest period of the city's history, and yet it is filled with some of the brightest moments of human courage. Leningraders showed incredible resistance and did everything they could to go on with life, including two particularly bright days: On 31 May 1942, following one of the coldest days of the siege, a football match was held between local teams Dinamo and N-sky. Dinamo won 6-0. On 9 August 1942, the Leningrad Radio Symphony Orchestra debuted Shostakovich's Seventh Symphony (The Leningrad) in the Philharmonic's Grand Hall (now called the Shostakovich Grand Hall). The performance was broadcast live across the city.
The Rostral Columns, two orange-red pillars located on the spit, or strelka, were originally navigation instruments. These early lighthouses burned oil for light in the 1800s. Today, natural gas is piped through the inside of the columns, which are lit on certain national and city holidays.
St. Petersburg's underground network (metro system) is the deepest in the world. The average depth is 200 ft/60 m, and some escalators are more than 500 ft/150 m—the longest in the world. There are two reasons for these depths: The metro was built not only for public transport purposes, but also as a potential shelter in case of a nuclear attack, and also because it runs underneath the Neva River and all of the area's many other rivers and streams.
