Saint Petersburg is a city and a federal subject of
Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea. The city’s other names were Petrograd and Leningrad. Founded by Emperor Peter the Great on May 27, 1703, it was the capital of the Russian Empire for more than two hundred years. Saint Petersburg ceased being the capital in 1918 after the Russian Revolution of 1917. It is Russia’s second largest and Europe’s fourth largest city (by city limit) after
Moscow,
London and
Paris. 4.6 million people live in the city, and over 6 million people live in the city’s vicinity.
Saint Petersburg is a major European cultural center, and important Russian port on the Baltic Sea. It is often described as the most Western European styled city of Russia.
Its geopolitical, intellectual, economical, cultural and historical advantages are unique. St. Petersburg is the symbol of the European part of Russia and one of the most venerable capitals of the world. St. Petersburg, a cultural center of the global significance, has accumulated and enormous cultural potential over the period of three centuries. For all this time the city has been a true pearl of world culture. Artists and architects made a permanent mark in the cultural history of Russia with their world-renowned architectural ensembles of St. Petersburg. There are over 250 museums, 18 literature museums, 44 art museums, 5 national museum-preserves, 39 history museums, 24 local history and ethnographic museums.
These are the Peter-and-Paul Fortress Complex, the
Alexander Nevsky Lavra Monastery, the Smolny, the
Spit of Vasilievsky Island with the buildings of Birzha and the Twelve Collegiums, the Dvortsovaya Square with the
Winter Palace, the Arc of the General Headquarters and the Alexander Column, the Dekabristove Square and the Bronze Horseman, the
St. Isaac Cathedral, and many more monuments and buildings.
Probably the most familiar symbol of Saint Petersburg is the equestrian statue of Peter the Great, known as the Bronze Horseman and installed in 1782 on the Senate Square.
Among the city’s more than fifty theaters is the world-famous
Mariinsky Theater (also known as the Kirov Theater in the USSR ), home to the
Mariinsky Ballet company and opera.
Saint Petersburg has a longstanding and world famous tradition in literature.
Dostoyevsky called it
“The most abstract and intentional city in the world” emphasizing its artificiality, but it was also a symbol of modern disorder in a changing Russia.
