During the era of the Tsars, construction of a number of luxurious summer residences took place in nearby surrounding areas of St. Petersburg. Some of these include the Peterhof Palace, sometimes referred to as the “Russian Versailles” in the Gulf of Finland, the Catherine Palace, Tsarskoe Selo (Pushkin) or the magnificent palace of Tsar Paul I in Pavlovsk.
VENICE OF THE NORTH
St. Petersburg is the Venice of the North. Peter the Great first founded this settlement on the swampy delta of the Neva River in 1703. From this time until the Russian revolution in 1917 it was home to the residence of the Tsars and kept the namesake of its founder for a long time. However, at the outbreak of the First World War, the name was changed to Petrograd, and then after Lenin’s death in 1924 the city was re-named Leningrad. In 1991, the city’s name was changed back to St. Petersburg. With its seemingly western European cityscape, the city shows the intention of Peter the Great and his successors to open with this city a “Gateway to the West”, in other words to bring the backward immense empire up to the same progressive standards existing in the West. What resulted on the Neva River with the participation of renowned Italian master builders was an elegant European metropolis influenced by classicism with wide boulevards, spacious city squares, numerous canals, and ornate bridges. Nowadays, St. Petersburg is a city on the verge of change; the city is lively and welcoming, and has become a big open-minded metropolis, which endears with its mixture of old world charm and new emerging lifestyles. Among the most important architectural monuments in St. Petersburg is the Peter and Paul Fortress, which forms the historic city centre. The cathedrals found within the fortress, the cemeteries of the Russian rulers, and their gold inlaid towers became the town’s landmark. The golden cupola of the huge Isaac Cathedral lends distinction to the silhouette of the metropolis. The admiralty and the old stock exchange and the impressive winter palace with the Hermitage, one of the most impressive art museums in the world, are further high points of a St. Petersburg city tour.
