Saint Petersburg

St. Petersburg is a city of haunting magnificence, an imperial capital that seems to have been built as a monument to its own passing. It was less than three centuries ago that Peter the Great began building his grand city on the Gulf of Finland, but it is difficult to visit its vast, crystalline squares and palaces without feeling the enormity of the gulf that separates that time from our own.

            

           View from St. Isaac's dome                                   Bridges up by night, always a lovely sight!  

All this hallowed antiquity, of course, makes St. Petersburg more evocative of Russia's past than any place except perhaps the Moscow Kremlin. This impression is only deepened by a more familiar acquaintance.

 
Dickinson of the 19th century

The enigmatic homeliness of Peter's cottage and the city's placid canals may contrast with the brooding grandeur of the Winter Palace, but they share with it a graceful stillness that is difficult to forget. (http://www.geographia.com/russia/peter01.htm )

             

                                  Dancing in front of Winter Palace                          Boat trip

To read more about history of SP, go to http://www.saint-petersburg.com/history/index.asp 
(in English)

If you want to keep track of what is happening in Saint-Petersburg, go to
http://www.gov.spb.ru/ 
http://saint-petersburg.ru/ 

If you want to keep track of what culture events are happening there, go to
http://www.st-petersburg.ru/