Saint Petersburg Russia

Description: Saint Petersburg, formerly known as Leningrad, second-largest city in Russia after Moscow. It is situated on the River Neva, at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea. The city had a population of roughly 5.6 million residents as of 2021, with more than 6.4 million people living in the metropolitan area. Saint Petersburg is the fourth-most populous city in Europe, the most populous city on the Baltic Sea, and the world’s northernmost city of more than 1 million residents. As Russia’s Imperial capital, and a historically strategic port, it is governed as a federal city.

Population: 5,592,152

Demographics: Russian 84.72%; Ukrainian 1.87%; Belarusians 1.17%; Jewish 0.78%; Tatar 0.76%; Armenian 0.41%; Azeri 0.36%; Georgian 0.22%; Chuvash 0.13%; Polish 0.10%; Finnish 0.08%; Korean 0.08%; German 0.08%; Moldovan 0.07%; Mordovian 0.07%; Uzbek 0.06%; Kazakh 0.06%; Ossetian 0.06%; Bashkir 0.05%; Tajik.

History: Swedish colonists built Nyenskans, a fortress at the mouth of the Neva River in 1611, which was later called Ingermanland. The small town of Nyen grew up around the fort. The area was inhabited by Finnic Izhorians and Votians. The Ingrian Finns moved to Karelia and Savonia. Estonian, Karelian, Russian and German population was in the area. At the end of the 17th century, Peter the Great, who was interested in seafaring and maritime affairs, wanted Russia to gain a seaport to trade with the rest of Europe. The style of Petrine Baroque, developed by Trezzini and other architects and exemplified by such buildings as the Kunstkamera, Peter and Paul Cathedral, Twelve Collegia, became prominent in the city architecture of the early 18th century. Academy of Sciences, University and Academic Gymnasium were established in Saint Petersburg by Peter the Great. Established in 1762, the Commission of Stone Buildings of Moscow and Saint Petersburg ruled that no structure in the city could be higher than the Winter Palace and prohibited spacing between buildings. During the reign of Catherine the Great in the 1760s–1780s, the banks of the Neva were lined with granite embankments. However, it was not until 1850 that the first permanent bridge across the Neva, Annunciation Bridge, was allowed to open. Before that, only pontoon bridges were allowed. Obvodny Canal (dug in 1769–1833) became the southern limit of the city. In 1810, Alexander I established the first engineering higher education, the Saint Petersburg Main military engineering School in Saint Petersburg. Many monuments commemorate the Russian victory over Napoleonic France in the Patriotic War of 1812, including the Alexander Column by Montferrand, erected in 1834, and the Narva Triumphal Arch. During the Soviet era, many historic architectural monuments of the previous centuries were destroyed by the new regime for ideological reasons. While that mainly concerned churches and cathedrals, some other buildings were also demolished. On 1 December 1934, Sergey Kirov, the Bolshevik leader of Leningrad, was assassinated under suspicious circumstances, which became the pretext for the Great Purge. In Leningrad, approximately 40,000 were executed during Stalin’s purges. On 1 May 1945 Joseph Stalin, in his Supreme Commander Order No. 20, named Leningrad, alongside Stalingrad, Sevastopol, and Odesa, hero cities of the war. A law acknowledging the honorary title of “Hero City” passed on 8 May 1965 (the 20th anniversary of the victory in the Great Patriotic War), during the Brezhnev era. The Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR awarded Leningrad as a Hero City the Order of Lenin and the Gold Star medal “for the heroic resistance of the city and tenacity of the survivors of the Siege”. The Hero-City Obelisk bearing the Gold Star sign was installed in April 1985. The Leningrad Metro underground rapid transit system, designed before the war, opened in 1955 with its first eight stations decorated with marble and bronze. However, after Stalin’s death in 1953, the perceived ornamental excesses of the Stalinist architecture were abandoned. From the 1960s to the 1980s many new residential boroughs were built on the outskirts, many families moved there from kommunalkas in the city centre to live in separate apartments. Although the central part of the city has a UNESCO designation (there are about 8,000 architectural monuments in Petersburg). After 2005, the demolition of older buildings in the historical centre was permitted. In 2006, Gazprom announced an ambitious project to erect a 403 m (1,322 ft) skyscraper (the Okhta Center) opposite to Smolny, which could result in the loss of the unique line of Petersburg landscape.

Elevation: 175 m

Climate: Humid continental climate. Average annual temperature in Saint Petersburg is 5 C (41 F), the average for July is 18 C (64 F), the average for January is -5 C (22 F).

Attractions: State Hermitage Museum, Grand Peterhof Palace, Church Of The Savior On Spilled Blood, Katherine Palace And Park, Grand Maket Russia, Faberge Museum, State Russian Museum

Airports: St Pete-Clearwater International Airport PIE

Distance To City Centre: 20 km

Commute Length: 45 min

Average Cost: 35 USD

Traffic Hours: 7:30 am – 10:30 am, 4:30 pm – 8:30 pm