Saint Petersburg, Russia

This is a piece of old Europe in the heart of the most Russian Russia there can be, in the north part of the country on the Gulf of Finland, at the 60° parallel. It has Italian-style Medieval gates and palaces, French-style gardens and fountains, English-style parks, and all the soul and the contradictions of the Russia of today. Saint Petersburg surprises and charms, exalts and moves its visitors.

The residence of the Czars, St. Petersburg was the capital of all of Russia for more than two centuries. The Venice of the North has more than 60 canals, 100 islands and 300 bridges. Heroic city of World War II, St. Petersburg is extraordinary in every sense. St. Petersburg gave birth to the 19th century novels of Puskin, Gogol, and Dostoevsky; the great music of composers of the caliber of Cajkovskij, Prokofiev, Shostakovich and Rachmaninov, and the enchantment of classic ballet with Diaghilev and Stravinsky. Avant-garde artists studied and lived in St. Petersburg, among them Chagall and Malevich. Vladimir Putin was born here.

St. Petersburg saw the decabrist revolutions, the October Revolution, the Soviets, and perestroika, but has remained St. Petersburg: proud and more vital and lively than ever. Today it is a metropolis of five million inhabitants, fascinating, complex and above all, lovely. It is beautiful in any season, in winter’s magical embrace of snow and ice, with an average temperature around – 8° (but occasionally -25°!); in summer, when the interminable hours of light between May and July make it the enchanted capital of White nights and good living, and in the seasons in between, when the city parks are tinted in the most beautiful colors and life flows by. St. Petersburg awaits you!