St. Petersburg

St. Petersburg: What Visiting Looks Like Now

St. Petersburg is one of the great European cities architecturally - the 18th-century imperial facades along the Neva embankment, the canals and drawbridges, the Winter Palace occupying an entire block. It was built by Peter the Great after 1703 on the marshy delta of the Neva River, constructed through forced labour at enormous human cost, and modelled deliberately on Amsterdam and Versailles. The result is a city that does not look Russian in the way that Moscow looks Russian.

As of 2024, visiting St. Petersburg as a citizen of most Western countries has become substantially more complicated than it was before February 2022. Visa-free e-visa access was suspended. Many nationalities face restricted or denied visa issuance. International card payments (Visa, Mastercard) are not processed in Russia; cash in rubles, exchanged locally, is required for most transactions. Direct flights from Western Europe and North America are no longer available. Anyone planning to visit should check their government’s current travel advisory and the Russian embassy’s visa requirements for their specific nationality before making any plans.

The following describes what the city offers for those for whom the trip is currently feasible.

The Hermitage

The State Hermitage Museum occupies the Winter Palace and five connected buildings on Palace Square. The collection of 3 million objects - Impressionists, Dutch Golden Age, ancient Scythian gold, Egyptian antiquities - is the largest in Russia and one of the largest in the world. Entry is around RUB 500 for foreign visitors (approximately EUR 5 at 2024 rates, but exchange rates fluctuate significantly). Book tickets online to avoid the queue at the main entrance, which can be 45 minutes on summer weekends.

Allow a minimum of three hours for a selective tour of the main highlights; the full museum requires multiple visits.

Peterhof

Peterhof, 29km west of the city on the Gulf of Finland, is a palace and gardens complex built by Peter the Great to rival Versailles. The Grand Cascade, a network of 64 fountains and 200 statues running down the slope from the palace to the sea canal, operates May through October. The hydrofoil from the embankment near the Hermitage takes 30-40 minutes and is the pleasanter approach (versus the suburban train). Entry to the lower park with fountains is around RUB 1,000.

Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood

Built on the spot where Alexander II was fatally wounded in 1881, the church has a mosaic interior covering 7,000 square metres. It is not a functioning Orthodox church but a museum. Entry is around RUB 500. The exterior - deliberately modelled on St. Basil’s Cathedral in Moscow - is the most photographed building in St. Petersburg after the Hermitage.

The Mariinsky Theatre

The Mariinsky is one of the historically significant opera and ballet venues in the world - the Kirov Ballet, as it was internationally known during the Soviet period, trained and launched Rudolf Nureyev, Mikhail Baryshnikov, and Natalia Makarova among others. Performances still run, tickets start at around RUB 1,500 for upper tiers. The Mariinsky II, a newer building across the canal from the original, handles the overflow schedule.

White Nights

From mid-June to early July, St. Petersburg’s latitude (59.9 degrees north) produces nights where it never fully darkens. The city historically marks this period with festival events and the bridges over the Neva open to allow shipping from around 01:30 to 05:00, stranding late-night revellers on Vasilyevsky Island temporarily. The light quality at 23:00 in June - golden, flat, diffuse - is unlike anything in southern European cities and worth experiencing once.