Saint Peterburg
With its face turned towards Europe and its back to Moscow and Asia, St Petersburg was designed by Peter the Great to outstrip Paris and Vienna and bring Russia screaming into the heady 18th-century world of competitive nation-states. Chosen for its Baltic port position, in an area previously notorious for its swamps and mosquitoes, the Russians overcame the difficulties of the riverine terrain to create a unique waterside city.
St Petersburg was built on a grand scale, with palaces and boulevards designed to be viewed from afar, and bold symmetry embracing the whole. The city sprawls across and around the mouth of the Neva River which splits the city into northern, eastern and southern sectors. The area spreading back from the Winter Palace and the Admiralty on the south bank is the city's heart, and Nevsky prospekt is its main artery. This central area is a pedestrian's dream, as the waterside walkways and elegant streetscapes are best seen on foot.
The city was Russia's capital between 1712 and 1918 and was renamed St Petersburg in 1991 after previous 20th-century incarnations as Petrograd and Leningrad. Although its northern latitude lines up with Greenland and Alaska, the climate benefits from warm offshore currents. Midwinter doldrums are excised during the midsummer 'White Nights', when darkness barely takes hold and the sleepless city is at its invigorating best.
There are three centrally located youth hostels in St Petersburg, and several inexpensive hotels. St Petersburg's International Hostel is a great place to meet fellow travellers. Restaurants and café's are civilised and numerous, and those TV images of bread queues and empty shelves are as dated as Duran Duran and power-dressing. The increase in quality, however, has undoubtedly seen a corresponding increase in prices. An evening meal at one of the more expensive restaurants will take you well into the early hours, with drinking, dancing and entertainment - and a bill almost equal to Western prices. Three of the city's bars cater to gays and lesbians but foreigners will probably be allowed in regardless of their sexual orientation.
Places to Visit
Palace Square
For 200 years the vast Russian empire was ruled from this half-km block at St Petersburg's heart. This is one of Europe's great squares, lined with colourful yet elegant edifices and dotted with monuments commemorating Russia's victory over Napoleon. It witnessed Bloody Sunday in 1905, the Bolshevik's grab for power in 1917, and all-night vigils in the name of democracy during the 1991 coup.
The square is dominated by the green and white rococo fantasy of the Winter Palace, the largest of the architectural components which make up the State Hermitage Museum. In the grey old days visitors came to the city for the museum alone and even today it could probably eat up a week of your precious time. The complex of buildings is the size of a small town - a map and compass are absolute essentials. Four linked riverside buildings - the Winter Palace, the Little and Large Hermitage buildings and the Hermitage Theatre - holds a vast collection of Western European art, with enough chandeliers, over-the-top interior encrustations and tsarist jewels and treasures to have you seeing stars for days. The collection largely dates from the culturally heightened days of Catherine the Great, and many works were gained when Napoleon's power began to wane.
Adjacent to the Winter Palace is the gilded spire of the Admiralty - a good landmark to use when you're out and about. This Empire-style classical building houses a naval college and is replete with trumpeting angels, oversized statues and fountains. Another building which dominates the skyline is the golden-domed St Isaac's Cathedral, which provides fine views from the supporting colonnade.
Peter & Paul Fortress
Tiny Zayachy Island contains the oldest building in town - the Peter & Paul Fortress. It was built in 1703 to defend the newly acquired land from the Swedes and designed according to plans laid out by Peter the Great himself. However, its main use up to 1917 was as a political prison and the first inmate was Peter's own son Alexey, who wasfollowed by other notables such as Dostoevsky, Gorky, Trotsky and Lenin's older brother, Alexander. The adjacent cathedral, though plain on the outside, has a magnificent baroque interior. Most of Russia's Romanov rulers are buried here. All this was built while Peter was still roughing it in a log cabin overlooking his golden embryonic city. The cabin is preserved as a shrinelike museum.
Tsarist St Petersburg
St Petersburg's splendid architecture provides a visible means of understanding the revolution of 1917: just mentally contrast the opulent lifestyles of the royal family and nobility with the lives of the have-not soldiers and workers. The city's buildings reflect European tastes and traditions, and were largely commissioned during the reigns of Empress Elizabeth, Catherine the Great and Alexander I. Neoclassical styles predominate. The Summer Palace, located in St Petersburg's loveliest public gardens, was built for Peter and is pretty nigh intact today. Its comparative modesty contrasts with the Versailles-like symmetry of the gardens.
One of the city's most photographed relics of former glories lies at the eastern end of Nevsky prospekt: the Beloselsky-Belozersky Palace. The building is easily recognised by its dark-red stucco and row of weight-bearing musclemen sporting crumpled nappies. It's easy to understand why the building was utilised by the local branch of the Communist Party until 1991. Empress Elizabeth's favourite architect (and lover), Rastrelli, was responsible for the green and white Stroganov Palace, which overlooks the Moyka River. The family fortune was based on the Siberian fur trade, and, yes, their chef did invent beef stroganoff.
Vasilevsky Island
St Petersburg's largest island lies wedged like a plug in the mouth of the Neva. The main points of interest are clustered on its eastern 'nose', just across the river from the Admiralty. They include maritime buildings, the city's university, a clutch of museums, and some of the best views of the city. Museums include the Naval Museum, Zoological Museum, (with its freakish collection) and the Academy of Arts. The island's nostrils are adorned with the Rostral Columns, navigation beacons shaped like ship's prows which today spurt forth gas-fuelled fire on holidays. The Menshikov Palace was one of the first buildings erected on the island and today it functions as a museum, overflowing with period furnishings and fittings.
Literary Connections
Pushkin launched Russia's impressive literary pedigree and described St Petersburg's decadence particularly well in Eugene Onegin. His poem The Bronze Horseman brings the famous statue that graces the Neva's embankment to life. Tolstoy also had a go at the nobs in War and Peace and Anna Karenina, comparing simple Moscow life with superficial and sophisticated St Petersburg. Dostoevsky on the other hand targeted the life of the poor in Crime and Punishment. Pushkin's last home, on one of the prettiest curves of the Moyka River, is now a museum, complete with stopped clock and replicated library. The writer expired here after fighting a duel to defend the tarnished reputation of his wife. Dostoevsky's home has also been turned into a faithfully reconstructed museum. He died here of a throat haemorrhage while writing up his diary.
Hitting the Shops on Nevsky Prospect
St Petersburg's `Champs Elysées' is the famous Nevsky prospekt, which runs west from the Admiralty 4km to the Alexandr Nevsky Monastery on the banks of the Neva. It's lined with fine buildings and thronged with people - a good place to feel the city's pulse, particularly during the midsummer White Nights. The list of former residents who lived on and around the famous thoroughfare reads like a veritable Who's Who: Gogol, Tchaikovsky, Turgenev, Nijinsky, Rimsky-Korsakov and Dostoevsky. While strolling, don't forget to look up and around at the wealth of architectural details. Sights you'll pass include the many-columned Kazan Cathedral (home to the Museum of Religion), the Art Nouveau former premises of the Singer sewing-machine company (now a bookshop), the arcaded Gostiny Dvor department store and the huge square dominated by the statue of Catherine the Great surrounded by her numerous lovers. Many of the shops are worth browsing for their interiors alone. They range from 19th-century palaces of merchandise to amazingly opulent Art Nouveau and Art Deco extravaganzas.
Radio-Tele Antennae
The Leningrad Radio-Tele Broadcasting Centre's antenna has recently opened to visitors. The 50,000-watt, 310m transmitter tower offers excellent views of the city and its environs, and there's a bar-café 200m up the structure. The tower sways up to 50 cm on windy days, and you can feel it! The construction of the tower was supervised by an all-female crew.
Petrodvorets
Most European rulers had at least one Versailles, and Peter the Great was no exception. He built a series of palaces on a beautiful site 30km west of St Petersburg, the combined ensemble known as Petrodvorets. This legacy of tsarist overindulgence was virtually destroyed by the occupying Germans in WW II, and what you see today is a faithful reconstruction that stands as a symbol of the nation's postwar recovery.
Fountains play a very large part in explaining Petrodvorets' impressive charm. The Grand Cascade & Water Avenue is a symphony of fountains and canals partly engineered by Peter himself. Petrodvorets' other components include the Grand Palace, enlarged by Rastrelli for Empress Elizabeth and later remodelled by Catherine the Great. The pendulous chandeliers and paintings are originals; fortunately they were removed before the Germans arrived. Peter's original villa, Monplaisir, has bright and airy galleries facing the sea - it's easy to see why it was his favourite place to doss. The gardens are dotted with the ubiquitous fountains, charming pavilions and summer houses, including the ultimate in private dining rooms, the self-contained and moated Hermitage.
Kirovsky Islands
The outer delta islands, lying to the north of the centre, are collectively called the Kirovsky Islands, and include Kamenny, Yelagin and Krestovsky. The islands were granted to court favourites and developed into elegant playgrounds. Today they're still mostly leafy venues for picnics and White Nights cavorting. Summerhouses, gingerbread mansions, palaces, boating channels, cycle paths and a seaside park mingle with the houses of St Petersburg's very rich.
Pushkin
Evocative of the rosy days and the grey days of the Romanovs, the summer palaces at Tsarskoe Selo (renamed Pushkin in 1937 to commemorate the centenary of his death) were created for Empress Elizabeth and Catherine the Great. They lie 25km south of St Petersburg. The baroque Catherine Palace was left in ruins by the Germans at the end of WW II but today is a masterpiece of restoration. The facade features golden domes and blue and white detailing, while the interior positively gleams and glitters with mirrors, chandeliers and tumescent cherubs. Don't miss the Fabergé exhibition. Just north of the Catherine Palace is the lemon-coloured Alexander Palace. Favourite haunt of Nicholas and Alexandra, it ironically became their prison when they were put under house arrest before being shunted off to Yekaterinburg. The damage inflicted during WW II is still to be repaired and the palace is not yet open to the public.
Entertainment
St Petersburg's most famous cultural treat is the Kirov Ballet Company, though the Philharmonia and Kirov Opera are also a must if you get the chance. St Petersburg is Russia's Rock music capial, and now that the volume can be turned up, the city regularly sees gigs by the country's major noisemakers, such as Dva Samolyota, Nogu Svelo (English translation: Cramp in the Leg - doesn't really invite you to get up and dance, does it?), Bravo and the everlasting Alla Pugachyova. Buskers are also a common sight these days, since the loss of state funding has literally forced many musicians onto the streets. Theatre is conservative and sticks to the classics, but there are several excellent puppet theatres in the city. The 100,000-seat Kirov Stadium on Krestovsky Island is a bracing place to watch some woeful soccer - the local team is unfortunately rather skill-challenged.
