St. Petersburg Highlights
A curated tour of St. Petersburg's most magnificent landmarks — from the world's greatest art museum and golden-domed cathedrals to imperial fortresses, grand canals, and Russia's most famous boulevard. Peter the Great's 'Window to the West' is one of Europe's most breathtaking cities.
Trip Stops
- 1
The very birthplace of St. Petersburg, founded by Peter the Great in 1703 on Hare Island in the Neva River. Inside stands the Peter and Paul Cathedral — the world's tallest Orthodox bell tower at 122.5 metres — and the burial site of nearly every Russian emperor from Peter the Great to Nicholas II. The fortress also served as Russia's most feared political prison, holding inmates including Dostoevsky, Trotsky, and Gorky.
📍 St. Petersburg, St. Petersburg, Russia
- 2
Palace Square is St. Petersburg's magnificent main square, dominated by the turquoise-and-white Baroque Winter Palace — former home of the Russian tsars and now the centrepiece of the Hermitage Museum. The Hermitage is one of the world's largest art museums with over 3 million items, including works by Rembrandt, Da Vinci, Matisse, and Picasso. Catherine the Great founded the collection in 1764 with 225 paintings — it would take 11 years to walk past every exhibit if you spent just one minute at each.
📍 St. Petersburg, St. Petersburg, Russia
- 3
One of the largest domed cathedrals in the world at 102 metres tall, Saint Isaac's took 40 years to build (1818–1858) and required 25,000 wooden piles driven into the marshy ground. Its golden dome used 100 kg of pure gold and was painted grey during World War II to avoid being a bombing target. Now a museum, its colonnaded rooftop offers the finest panoramic view in the city — 360° over the Neva River and historic centre.
📍 St. Petersburg, St. Petersburg, Russia
- 4
St. Petersburg's most iconic monument — a rearing equestrian statue of Peter the Great atop a 1,500-tonne granite boulder known as the 'Thunder Stone', the largest stone ever moved by human hands without machinery. Commissioned by Catherine the Great and unveiled in 1782, its Latin inscription reads simply: 'To Peter I from Catherine II.' Aleksandr Pushkin immortalised it in his 1833 poem 'The Bronze Horseman', cementing it as the soul of the city.
📍 St. Petersburg, St. Petersburg, Russia
- 5
St. Petersburg's grand main boulevard — 4.5 km of palaces, cathedrals, bookshops, and cafes stretching from the Admiralty to the Alexander Nevsky Monastery. The Singer Sewing Machine Company famously circumvented a city law banning buildings taller than the Winter Palace by mounting a glass globe on top of their building, keeping it just within the limit. Gogol, Dostoevsky, and Pushkin all set pivotal scenes here — it remains the beating social heart of the city.
📍 St. Petersburg, St. Petersburg, Russia
- 6
A sweeping neoclassical cathedral on Nevsky Prospekt modelled closely on St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, with a dramatic 96-column colonnade embracing the square in front. Built between 1801 and 1811, it became a symbol of Russia's victory over Napoleon — Field Marshal Kutuzov is buried inside, and the cathedral's columns are hung with captured French battle standards. During the Soviet era it was converted into a Museum of the History of Religion and Atheism.
📍 St. Petersburg, St. Petersburg, Russia
- 7
St. Petersburg's most visually stunning church, built on the exact spot where Tsar Alexander II was fatally wounded by a bomb in 1881. Its wildly colourful onion domes — inspired by Moscow's St. Basil's Cathedral — look deliberately out of place amid the city's European neoclassicism. Inside are over 7,000 square metres of mosaics, the largest collection in the world. During the Soviet era it was used as a potato warehouse, which ironically helped preserve the mosaics.
📍 St. Petersburg, St. Petersburg, Russia
- 8
The world's largest collection of Russian art, housed in the magnificent neoclassical Mikhailovsky Palace built in 1825. With over 400,000 works spanning a thousand years — from ancient icons to the avant-garde of Kandinsky and Malevich — it is the essential complement to the Hermitage. Tsar Alexander III founded it as a public museum in 1895, and it was the first state museum in Russia dedicated exclusively to Russian art.
📍 St. Petersburg, St. Petersburg, Russia
- 9
Home to the world's largest collection of Fabergé works, including nine of the legendary Imperial Easter Eggs — jewelled masterpieces created for the last two Russian tsars. The museum is housed in the lavish Shuvalov Palace on the Fontanka River. Carl Fabergé was born in St. Petersburg in 1846, and his eggs have sold at auction for up to $33 million each. The collection was assembled by American billionaire Malcolm Forbes and purchased by a Russian businessman in 2004 to bring it back to Russia.
📍 St. Petersburg, St. Petersburg, Russia
- 10
Peter the Great's breathtaking answer to Versailles, located 29 km west of the city on the Gulf of Finland. After visiting Versailles in 1717, Peter vowed to surpass it — the result is the world's largest collection of fountains: 64 fountains and 255 golden statues powered entirely by natural water pressure with no pumps. The Grand Cascade's centrepiece is a gilded Samson wrenching open a lion's jaws, symbolising Russia's victory over Sweden. Best visited in summer when the fountains run.
📍 Peterhof, St. Petersburg, Russia
- 11
A dazzling royal palace 25 km south of the city, renowned for the legendary Amber Room — an entire chamber panelled with six tonnes of amber, gold leaf, and mirrors, dubbed 'the Eighth Wonder of the World'. The original Amber Room was looted by the Nazis in 1941 and vanished; the reconstructed version, completed in 2003, took 24 years and $11 million to recreate. The palace's electric blue Baroque exterior with gold trim stretches an astonishing 325 metres.
📍 Pushkin, St. Petersburg, Russia
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