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St. Petersburg is believed to be one of the most beautiful cities in the world and is a popular tourist destination due to its cityscapes and architecture, art museums, suburban palaces and parks of the former imperial residences, and the rich cultural life. St. Petersburg is particularly attractive during the "White Nights" season: some six weeks around the summer solstice, June 21. Due to the northern city's position, there is no night darkness at all at that time, with just slightly more than 2 hours separating the sunset and sunrise. Traditionally, night festivities are taking place at the Neva embankments in late June and early July, with many cultural events scheduled for the White Nights' period.

Although a relatively young city, St. Petersburg continues the cultural, political and economical traditions of the North-Western Russia that was one of the basic nuclei of the formation of Russian nation during the Middle Ages (to be accurate, the collecting proper name Rus, or Russia, did not emerge till 11th century A.D.) The centre of these lands in 8–9 centuries was, most probably, the town of Ladoga at the Volkhov river (now village Staraya Ladoga about 70 miles east of St. Petersburg). Since 9th century, the capital of North-Western Russia moves to Novgorod (translated into English, the name reads Newcastle), a city by the Ilmen Lake 100 miles south of the today's St. Petersburg. Later on, the northwestern Russian lands are unified with the Southern and Western Russia (which long afterwards would have become Ukraine and Belarus, respectively) under the sceptre of the Grand Ducal dynasty of Ryurik (Old Norse, Hrodrik), the southern Kiev becoming the capital city. It was only much later that the North-Eastern Russia has emerged as a result of Russian colonization, with the successive capitals at Suzdal, Vladimir and Moscow.

During the whole Middle Ages, the North-Western Russia maintained its entity, remaining very different from the other, continental, parts of the country. Its main town Novgorod (The Overlord Great Novgorod, as its subjects used to call it) was one of the biggest European towns of the time, lived mainly on crafts and commerce, and was an associated member of the Hanseatic League, an economical and political union of the towns of Northern Europe. The Novgorodians were brave trailblazers, artful seafarers and talented merchants; they were in close contacts with both all their Baltic neighbours and with scattered population of the then yet non-colonized North-Eastern Europe.
One of the most famous personalities in Russian medieval history, the Grand Duke Alexander Nevsky (Alexander of the Neva), earned his title Nevsky due to a military battle he won at the banks of the Neva river (at Ust-Izhora, now within the administrative limits of St. Petersburg some 12 miles upstream the city center) in 1240. The Neva battle was an episode in the fight between Novgorod and Sweden to divide control over the eastern Baltic region. Alexander, then a young junior prince, was at the helm of a Novgorod host that repealed an offensive by the Swedes headed by Birger; the latter also has become a famous personality in the Swedish history and folklore later on: a jarl, an almighty Sweden's ruler, and the founder of a new dynasty of the Kings of Sweden.
Novgorod enjoyed a republican rule for more than 300 years, until it was crushed by the military force and conquered by Moscow in 15th century. The xenophobic and accustomed to despotic rule political class of Moscow was little interested in the European links and wholeheartedly hated the traditional freedoms of Novgorod. So during the next 250 years, the North-Western Russia was several times savagely devastated by Moscow and then, after Moscow has been weakened by the disorderly rule of Tsar Ivan the Terrible and the following "Tumultuous Time", was simply abandoned to an invasion by neighbouring powers.

Still the values of European civilization were preserved in the Russian national character. The foundation of St. Petersburg in 1703 marked an important turn in the Russian history: a return of the nation into the sphere of European politics, economy and culture. In 1712, while only 9 years old, St. Petersburg becomes the Russian capital and remains that till 1918. The old Kingdom of Moscovia is officially transformed into the Russian Empire in 1721, and Peter I is crowned in St. Petersburg as the first Russian Emperor. During the next 200 years, St. Petersburg was developing as a capital of one of the European superpowers, a centre of manufacture, industry, trade and culture. The first Russian museum of natural history opens in St. Petersburg during the first years of city existence. The Academy of Sciences is instituted in 1724, and in the same year the first Russian University is open. Ever since the foundation, St. Petersburg was a multi-lingual and multi-confessional town: both many outstanding public figures of non-Russian nationality and ordinary craftsmen, workers, traders, people of free professions, have made a great input into the development of St. Petersburg's life and culture. By the beginning of 20th century St. Petersburg had a population of more than 1 million and was, alongside of London, Paris, Vienna and Berlin, one of the most populous and splendid European metropolises.

In 19th century, St. Petersburg becomes the cradle of the world-renown Russian classical music and ballet. The life of the brightest figure of Russian classical literature Alexander Pushkin is closely associated with St. Petersburg. The city scenery appears in many poet's writings, and the Introduction to his poem "The Bronze Horseman", "I love thee, Peter's creation...", sounds like a hymn to St. Petersburg. Perhaps the most "Petersburgian" of the Russian writers were Gogol and Dostoyevsky. The plots of many of their stories and novels are immersed in the life of St. Petersburg of 19th century, and the routes of their characters, whatever fantastic they may appear, can be easily tracked around the city streets and buildings up till now.

The bolshevik coup of 1917 marks the commencement of a new period of Russian isolationism. The capital of the country is again moved to Moscow, and the role of St. Petersburg as a gateway to the Northern Europe is reduced to a minimum. The educated classes are persecuted, the cultural life is put under a strict ideological control, and the formerly diverse economic life is mainly confined to the development of military industrial complex. The city even loses its name, being renamed into Leningrad after the bolshevik leader Lenin upon his death in 1924. Still even under the communist regime, the city population was remaining one of the most educated and liberally-minded in Russia, despite the massive repressions specifically aimed against the city's traditions and its best citizens. Many outstanding personalities of the Russian and world culture and science of 20th century lived and worked in St. Petersburg/Leningrad.
One of the most tragic pages in the history of St. Petersburg was the two and a half years' siege of the city by the troops of nazi Germany during the World War II which has cost the lives of at least 1 million people who died of starvation and winter colds, but the city never fell to the enemy.

The late 1980's and early 1990's saw the downfall of the Soviet communist regime, and the collapse of the Soviet "Evil Empire". St. Petersburg was in the forefront of the democratic political and liberal economic reforms in Russia, delegating many of its intellectual and political elite into the national leadership. In 1991, St. Petersburg reinstated its original name, according to results of referendum. The city has been opening up again to the outside world, and to the Northern Europe in the first place. It tried to create an investment-friendly climate, to develop high technologies, and to attract tourists.

However, the hopes that Russia might quickly overcome devastating aftermaths of the long reign of the Soviet ideological, political and economical system turned out to be illusory: the democratic and liberal reforms commenced in the 1990's have basically failed. Nowadays we see Russia rapidly regress under a marasmatic political regime mainly effected by dull and unscrupulous "apparatchiks" of the Soviet Communist style. Those feeling themselves non-competitive in a modern open society based on the diversity of individual initiative and on personal responsibility managed to restore an authoritarian rule, the state control of economy, and to suppress the sprouts of civil society. We are witnessing growing infringements by the state upon human rights and the freedom of information, curtailing the local self-government and federalism, attacks on the freedom of economic activities, judicial arbitrarines, and the transformation of elections at all levels into a cinical farce or even their complete abolition. Particularly spoiling the current situation in Russia is the barbaric and absurd politics at the Caucasus pursued by the Russian Government for years with stupid stubbornness, and leading to nowhere.
In the 2nd decade of 21st century, we see Russia in the situation of growing degradation, and probably on the verge of a deep system crisis. The country has dangerously skidded back to the gloomy Soviet past with its suffocating public atmosphere, with the corrupt state structures not controlled by the society, and the with the growing gap between Russia and developed countries in the social, political, economical, technological, intellectual and mental advancement. As that happened many times throughout the Russian history, St. Petersburg, and the North-Western Russia on the whole, as the most advanced and "European" part of the country, suffer most from the establishment of a reactionary central power looking for mass support in the most backward population strata.
Sure, the attempts of the current Moscow Kremlin's masters to resist the global trends are to be futile in the long run, but the role of St. Petersburg as a link between Russia and the rest of Europe may become a key factor in minimizing, both in time and volume, the current Russia's retreat from the way of economic and social progress.

Petersburgians are tolerant, friendly and hospitable people trying to look with hope and faith into the future.

St. Petersburg Vistas
(Click on the pictures to see them full size)

The city scenery in St. Petersburg lacks a medieval architecture: the oldest city's buildings were constructed in the beginning of 18th century in the earlier baroque style. What we now regard as the historical core of St. Petersburg, of about 10 km (7 miles) diameter, was formed by the World War I. It presents a surprisingly harmonic combination of the earlier and late baroque, neo-classical, empire, eclectic and jugendstil styles, remarkable not only by separate outstanding edifices and ensembles, but not to a lesser degree by a diverse rank-and-file architecture. Dominating the city scenery at the Neva banks is the Peter-and-Paul Fortress occupying a separate island, with the Cathedral of St. Peter and St. Paul inside. An angel holding a cross atop the 120 m (400 ft)-high cathedral spire is seen from afar. An immense golden dome of St. Isaac's Cathedral, an elegant Admiralty spire bearing a weathervane in the form of a sailing ship, gigantic beacons of the Rostrum Columns flanking the massive Stock Exchange portico, the richly decorated baroque Winter Palace (formerly, the official Emperors' residence), and many other historical buildings make the vistas of the Neva absolutely unique and unmistakably recognizable. Brightly contrasting the broad Neva expanses are smaller granite-embanked canals twisting and tangling around the city center and crossed by picturesque bridges. The most lively avenue in the city is the Nevsky Prospect stretching from the Palace Square in front of the Winter Palace to the Moscow Station and further to the Alexander Nevsky Monastery. The most famous suburb of St. Petersburg is Peterhof with its 18th century palace and seaside park renown for numerous fountains and water cascades. Big attractions also are the imperial palaces and formal parks of Tsarskoye Selo, an immense beautiful landscape park of Pavlovsk with a neo-classical palace, romantic neo-gothic Gatchina, and baroque and rococo Oranienbaum. Unique is the island town of Kronstadt in the middle of the Gulf of Finland with its historical architecture; Kronstadt formerly used to be the main Russian naval base, a military stronghold that defended the sea approaches to St. Petersburg, and a starting point of many famous geographic exploration expeditions of the first half of 19th century.