Still in 2002 - now Saint Petersburg, Russia. Stunning, amazing. Highlights for me were the Winter Palace / Hermitage - the amount of art in there is mind blowing and seeing so many famous works, one after the other, blew my mind.
The museum of curios - I mean it didnt gross me out but I can see why people would be grossed out
The white nights - i went for a walk along the banks of the river Neva one night and watched the bridges lifting to allow ships to travel the river
I did sit through a Swan Lake ballet, purely because I was in Russia!
Built by Peter the Great in 1703 on the marshlands of the Neva Delta, it was designed as a window to the West: an imperial capital of canals, palaces, and culture that rivaled the great cities of Europe. Today, Saint Petersburg remains an open-air museum — a place where pastel façades meet golden domes, where ballet, bridges, and art coexist under a northern sky that refuses to darken in summer.
No visit to Saint Petersburg is complete without standing beneath the chandeliers of the State Hermitage Museum, one of the world’s greatest art collections. Housed mainly in the Winter Palace, the former home of the Romanov tsars, it is both a palace and a temple of culture.
Founded by Catherine the Great in 1764, the Hermitage holds over three million pieces — Rembrandts and Rubens, da Vinci and Michelangelo, Impressionists and ancient treasures. Its endless galleries unfold through marble staircases and gilded halls so sumptuous that the building itself feels like a masterpiece. As you walk through rooms that once echoed with the life of the imperial court, art and history merge — each brushstroke a whisper of Russia’s past.
Just a short walk from the Hermitage rises one of the city’s most striking sights: the Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood. With its dazzling, multi-colored onion domes, intricate mosaics, and gilded crosses, it seems lifted straight from a fairy tale.
The church was built on the spot where Tsar Alexander II was assassinated in 1881 — hence its name, commemorating the “spilled blood” of the reformist tsar. Completed in 1907, the building stands as both a memorial and a masterpiece of late Russian Revival architecture, inspired by Moscow’s St Basil’s Cathedral yet entirely its own.
Inside, the walls shimmer with over 7,000 square meters of mosaics depicting biblical scenes, saints, and floral patterns — among the largest mosaic collections in the world. When sunlight filters through the arched windows, the colors seem to glow from within. Outside, reflected in the Griboedov Canal, its domes glitter like gemstones against the northern sky. The church embodies the soul of Saint Petersburg itself: tragic, beautiful, and resilient.
Before the Hermitage or the glittering cathedrals, Peter the Great founded something much stranger — the Kunstkamera, or Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography. Established in 1714, it was Russia’s first museum and a testament to the tsar’s relentless curiosity.
Peter collected oddities from across the world: scientific instruments, preserved animals, and even anatomical specimens meant to educate his people rather than frighten them. The result is one of the most unusual museums in Europe — eerie, fascinating, and deeply human. The turquoise-and-white façade facing the Neva River remains one of Saint Petersburg’s most recognizable sights, a symbol of the city’s thirst for knowledge and exploration.
Each summer, from late May to mid-July, Saint Petersburg enters its most magical season: the White Nights. Because of its high latitude, the sun barely sets, and the city bathes in a silvery twilight that lasts all night. Streets fill with musicians, lovers stroll the embankments at 2 a.m., and a sense of celebration fills the air.
During the White Nights Festival, concerts, fireworks, and open-air performances transform the city into one long festival of light. The atmosphere feels suspended between dream and day — soft, glowing, and unforgettable. To experience the White Nights is to see Saint Petersburg at its most alive, its spirit unbound by darkness.
The Neva River divides the city into a series of islands linked by majestic drawbridges. Every night in summer, around 1 a.m., the bridges lift to allow ships to pass — a ritual as old as the city itself. The most famous, the Palace Bridge, rises directly beside the Hermitage, its twin arms reflecting in the moonlit water.
Crowds gather along the embankments to watch the spectacle: the warning bells, the slow ascent of the roadways, the applause when the bridge stands tall and glowing in the light of dawn. It’s romantic, practical, and symbolic all at once — the heartbeat of a city forever tied to its rivers.
Few cultural experiences compare to watching Swan Lake performed at the Mariinsky Theatre, the cradle of Russian ballet. The Mariinsky has nurtured legends like Anna Pavlova, Rudolf Nureyev, and Mikhail Baryshnikov. Its gilded balconies and velvet curtains still carry the elegance of another era.
To ground yourself again in everyday life, there’s no better place than Nevsky Prospekt, the city’s grand boulevard. Stretching for nearly five kilometers, it’s lined with bookshops, palaces, cathedrals, and cafés where the scent of coffee mingles with the hum of conversation.
Nevsky Prospekt has always been Saint Petersburg’s stage — Dostoevsky’s characters walked here, Pushkin wrote here, and modern life continues to unfold on the same stones. A cup of strong Russian coffee or tea with lemon here feels like communion with the spirit of the city itself.
Saint Petersburg is a city of reflection — built by visionaries, scarred by revolution, and softened by beauty. Its contrasts define it: imperial opulence beside quiet decay, grandeur beside intimacy. The Hermitage dazzles with culture; the Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood mourns and glows in color; the bridges rise like wings in the night; and the ballet reminds you that art can transcend hardship.
For travelers, Saint Petersburg is not merely a destination but an experience of time itself — a place where the past breathes beside the present.
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