28 Best things to see & do in St Petersburg

Visiting St. Petersburg is a chance to discover the larger-than-life personalities who ruled the city: the powerful Romanov dynasty aka the Tsars.

Ornate onion-bulb domes, glittering mosaics and buildings on a vast scale make St Petersburg’s churches and cathedrals some of the most impressive in the world.

Discover St Petersburg’s spectacular architecture from the water, with a slow-paced cruise through the city’s rivers, waterways and canals.

St Petersburg’s oldest eatery is a favourite of Russia’s famous writers and an excellent place to sample traditional Russian food.

Looming over Nevsky Prospekt, the scale of Kazan is breathtaking. Modelled on St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, the church took ten years to build between 1801-11 and is famous for its impressive stone colonnade.

Dominating the city’s skyline, St Isaacs is magnificently decorated with Orthodox icons and frescoes, and offers panoramic views from the alfresco colonnade.

Visit the elegant mansion of the wealthy and colorful Yussupov family, the notorious site of the grisly murder of Grigory Rasputin in 1916.

Vast complex housing a jaw-dropping collection of Egyptian antiquities, European Renaissance Art, treasure galleries and Russian military history. Second largest art museum in the world.

Enjoy a night of Russia’s outstanding classical music at the elegant Philharmonic Hall, right in the center of the city.

Russia’s rich tradition of visual arts is celebrated in the network of buildings and gardens of the State Russian Museum, housing 400,000 exhibits dating back to the 10th century.