5 Days in Saint Petersburg

Palace Square is where the city shows off. The long green-and-white Winter Palace fills one side and the curved yellow General Staff Building the other, and between them stands the Alexander Column, 47.5 meters of red granite in a single piece, unveiled on 30 August 1834 to celebrate the victory over Napoleon. It isn't fixed to its base. It stays up under its own weight alone, which is the first thing locals tell you and the first thing you want to doubt.

The square also has a darker memory. The storming of the Winter Palace in 1917 became a symbol of the October Revolution, largely through Soviet paintings and Eisenstein's 1928 film October, so the picture many people carry comes from art rather than from the events. Stand in the middle, turn all the way round, then go inside.

The Winter Palace was the home of the Russian emperors from 1732 to 1917, was badly damaged by fire in 1837 and rebuilt at once. The Hermitage began in 1764, when Catherine the Great bought 225 paintings from a Berlin merchant, and opened to the public in 1852. Today it holds over three million items across six historic buildings, and only a small part is on show. You can't see it all in a day, so don't try.

Pick a route. The State Rooms of the palace are a sight on their own. The Dutch and Flemish rooms of the New Hermitage hold Rembrandt's Danaë, there is a golden 18th-century Peacock Clock by James Cox, and the ground floor has Scythian gold and an Egyptian collection. Your feet will give out before the collection does.

Come out of the Hermitage hungry and head east to the doughnut shop on Bolshaya Konyushennaya street, number 25. A pyshechnaya sells pyshki, sugar-dusted Russian doughnuts that are strongly associated with Saint Petersburg and go well with coffee. It's a snack stop, not a restaurant, which is the point after hours of paintings. Eat them hot, and carry cash.

Walk west along the Admiralty's long garden. The gilded spire marks where the city started: the shipyard was laid down on this bank in 1704, and Nevsky Prospect, the main avenue, runs out from this spot. Then cross to Senate Square for the Bronze Horseman, Falconet's statue of Peter the Great on a rearing horse, unveiled in 1782 with the inscription To Peter the First from Catherine the Second. She had come to the throne in a coup and wanted to look like his rightful heir.

The pedestal is the Thunder Stone, a granite block that once weighed about 1,500 tonnes and was cut down to around 1,250 for the journey. Pushkin's 1833 poem about the statue is among the most important works of Russian literature, and the city has been tied to it ever since.

Saint Isaac's Cathedral took 40 years, from 1818 to 1858, and its architect was the Frenchman Auguste de Montferrand. The outside has 112 red granite columns, each a single block, and the gilded dome rises 101.5 meters. The Soviet government made it a museum in 1931, and it has been one ever since, with services only in a side chapel. During the war the dome was painted grey so bombers wouldn't spot it.

Go inside for the decoration, then climb to the colonnade, a 43-meter walkway around the dome that's reached on foot, over 250 steps by one count. The view across the roofs to the Admiralty and the Neva is best at dusk, around 4:30 pm in November, when the city lights come on. The colonnade closes at 18:00.

Georgian cooking is common in Saint Petersburg, and so are Uzbek places and Russian dining rooms with pelmeni and borscht on the menu. Pick somewhere with a Russian menu and a crowd. Restaurant names turn over quickly, so there's no single address here.

During the navigation season the big bridges over the Neva are raised at night to let ships through, and watching the Palace Bridge go up is the classic Saint Petersburg night out. The raising happens in the small hours, in windows that change from night to night, and the operator publishes the schedule.

The season ends in late autumn, which is the catch for a November trip. In 2025 the Neva bridges stopped raising on the night of 30 November and the branches on 15 November, and the 2026 end date had not been announced on 8 November. Check the schedule before you plan a night around it.

Start with the building you were facing yesterday. The General Staff Building was designed by Carlo Rossi in the Empire style and built in 1819 to 1829. Its two wings are joined by a triple triumphal arch commemorating the victory over Napoleon in 1812, and the arch is also the route from Palace Square through Bolshaya Morskaya Street to Nevsky Prospect.

The Hermitage was given the eastern wing in 1993 and rebuilt the interior. It's usually quieter than the main museum, and the exhibitions change, so check what's on.

Walk out through the arch and turn right onto Nevsky Prospect, which runs about 4.5 km from the Admiralty and took shape in the 1710s. Kazan Cathedral was built between 1801 and 1811 by Andrey Voronikhin, with a curved colonnade that opens its arms to the avenue. After Napoleon invaded in 1812, General Kutuzov asked Our Lady of Kazan for help, and he was buried inside in 1813. The Soviet authorities closed it in January 1932 and reopened it that November as the Museum of the History of Religion and Atheism. It's a cathedral again.

Across the avenue stands the Singer House, built in 1902 to 1904 for the Singer sewing machine company. The Art Nouveau building had to stay under the 23.5-meter height limit, so its architect Pavel Suzor crowned it with a glass tower and a globe.

Walk east along Nevsky to number 56. Eliseyev Emporium was built in 1902 and 1903 for the Eliseyev brothers, merchants who sold imported delicacies, and the architect was Gabriel Baranovsky. The shop had a state operator through the Soviet years and has changed hands several times since, and a famous food hall is part of the complex.

Come for the interior, then buy something small and check what's open that day.

Turn north to the canal. The Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood was built between 1883 and 1907 on the exact spot where Alexander II was assassinated by the Narodnaya Volya group in March 1881. The canal was narrowed so the place where he fell could sit inside the church walls. Its onion domes and colored tiles look nothing like the neoclassical palaces around it.

Go in. The walls and ceilings are covered in more than 7,000 square meters of mosaics, among the largest collections in the world. The Soviet government closed the church in 1932, and after the war it served as a vegetable warehouse, which earned it the nickname Saviour on Potatoes. Restoration took 27 years, and it reopened in August 1997 as a museum, never reconsecrated.

Five minutes from the Savior, Arts Square is the quiet, grand heart of the city's cultural life. Its main building is the Mikhailovsky Palace, designed by Carlo Rossi and built in 1819 to 1825 as a home for a Grand Duke. The Russian Museum was set up in 1896 on the order of Nicholas II in memory of his father, Alexander III, opened in 1898 and is the world's largest collection of Russian fine art.

If the Hermitage is Europe's art in Russia, this is Russia's own art. Don't try the whole palace; pick a period and add the Benois Building next door if you want more.

Finish on the avenue itself. After dark the shopfronts and the Singer House globe are lit, and Nevsky becomes the street people picture when they think of the city. Walk from Kazan Cathedral toward Gostiny Dvor, find dinner on one of the side streets, and take the long way back.

The Peter and Paul Fortress is where the city began. Peter founded it in 1703 on Hare Island, as a citadel to hold the Neva against the Swedes, and it was built to Domenico Trezzini's designs from 1706 to 1740. It became a prison for political criminals, and a museum in 1924.

The cathedral is the reason to come. Its gilded spire is 123 meters tall and topped by an angel with a cross, and inside lie almost all the Russian emperors from Peter the Great to Nicholas II, whose family was finally laid to rest in July 1998. The combined ticket also covers the Trubetskoy Bastion prison, where political prisoners were held, and several exhibitions. The bell tower costs extra. At noon every day a cannon is fired, a signal that goes back to 1873.

Walk back toward the Trinity Bridge and stop for a plain lunch. A stolovaya (canteen) or café that sells blini, pelmeni or a bowl of shchi is the right call. There's no one place worth the detour, so look for a Russian menu, a lunch deal and a till that takes rubles in cash.

The Trinity Bridge was built in 1897 to 1903 by a French firm, after a design contest that included an entry from Gustave Eiffel. Walking across it gives a wide view of the Neva and the Palace Embankment.

On the far side lies the Field of Mars, a big, open square that has been a meadow, a pleasure garden, a military parade ground and a revolutionary pantheon. It was renamed in 1805 for its military reviews. On a cold day it's a place to cross, not to stay on.

The Summer Garden was laid out personally by Peter the Great in 1704 and sits on an island between the Neva, the Moika and the Fontanka. It holds statues of classical figures, a former royal palace and a monument to the fable writer Ivan Krylov, and its cast-iron fence is a city symbol. The statues outdoors are replicas, because the 90 survivors were moved indoors in the late 20th century. Hours change with the season, so check before you go.

The Fabergé Museum sits in the Shuvalov Palace on the Fontanka, which was restored for it and opened on 19 November 2013. It's a private museum, founded by the businessman Viktor Vekselberg through his Link of Times foundation, and holds more than 4,000 objects, the best known of which is the Imperial Coronation Egg of 1897.

This is the stop for jewelry and craftsmanship rather than painting. Ticket listings show it open every day from 10:00 until 20:45, which makes it a good last stop of the day.

Walk the few hundred meters to the Anichkov Bridge, the oldest and most famous bridge over the Fontanka. The four bronze horse-tamer groups at its corners are by Peter Klodt and date from 1849 to 1850. Petersburg lore says Klodt died of shame on finding that two of the horses had no tongues. It's a myth: he lived until 1867. Come at dusk, when the lights come on along the canal, then walk back toward Nevsky Prospect for dinner.

The suburban train (elektrichka) leaves from the local-trains hall of Vitebsky Station, a smaller hall to the right of the main one, and runs to the Tsarskoye Selo station in the town of Pushkin. The first public railway in Russia opened on this line in 1837. Trains run every 15 to 20 minutes, and weekday trains have a gap in the late morning, but Sunday has no such gap.

The village was founded as Tsarskoye Selo in 1710. After the revolution it was renamed Detskoye Selo, and in 1937 it became Pushkin, on the hundredth anniversary of the poet's death, who studied at the lyceum here. From the station, take a local bus or walk to the palace, and check the route on the day.

The Catherine Palace is the pale blue and white mass that Bartolomeo Rastrelli built between 1751 and 1756 for Empress Elizabeth, with almost 100 kg of gold on the stucco and statues. Catherine the Great later had Charles Cameron redo some rooms in a cooler classical style. When German forces retreated in World War II they destroyed it on purpose and left only a shell, and the palace you see was rebuilt by restorers.

The Amber Room is the reason for the queue. The original was made in Prussia in the early 1700s and given to Peter the Great in 1716, then installed here under Elizabeth. The Germans took it in 1941 and it reached Königsberg on 14 October 1941. The city was bombed in August 1944 and the trail ends there. A reconstruction was started in 1979 and installed in 2003, with about 450 kg of amber, and what you see is that copy. Look at the Great Hall as well, Rastrelli's ballroom that fills the whole width of the palace.

Look for a café a couple of streets from the palace gates that serves pirozhki (baked or fried buns), blini or soup. A bun and a bowl of soup is a good lunch on a cold day. Keep cash handy.

The park behind the palace has two halves. The formal Old Garden was laid out by Dutch gardeners in the 1720s, on three terraces, and the later English-style park runs around the Great Pond. Catherine II filled it with monuments to her victories over the Turks, including columns, an obelisk and a ruined tower, and Cameron added the long Cameron Gallery.

In November the paths are bare and the water is grey, and it is still worth an hour. Wear waterproof boots.

A short walk takes you to the Alexander Palace, built by Giacomo Quarenghi from 1792 to 1796. It was the favorite home of Nicholas II, the last emperor, and his family, and after he abdicated on 15 March 1917 they were held here under house arrest until August. It reopened as a state museum in summer 2021 after years of work.

The story here is a human one: a family in a house, waiting. If you are short on time, choose this over the park.

The tip of Vasilyevsky Island, the Strelka (spit), is the best place to see the Winter Palace across the water. The Old Stock Exchange, modeled on a Greek temple, was designed by Thomas de Thomon and built between 1805 and 1810, and the two Rostral Columns beside it were completed in 1811. The spit sits right opposite the Winter Palace, so this is the place for the postcard view across the Neva. The wind comes straight off the water in winter, so take the picture and go.

The Yusupov Palace was the home of one of the richest families in the empire, rebuilt in the 1830s by Andrei Mikhailov, and it is now a museum. It is best known as the place where Grigori Rasputin was killed in the early morning of 30 December 1916 (17 December in the calendar Russia then used).

The usual story, from Prince Yusupov's own memoir, has cyanide cakes failing to work before the shots. Little about that night is certain, so treat the poison as a tale. The state rooms are worth seeing in their own right.

New Holland is a man-made island created in 1719 when two canals were cut to join the Moika to the Neva. It was named for its canals and shipyards, which looked like Amsterdam, and it stored timber for the Admiralty for almost two centuries. The red-brick arch over the canal, with its Tuscan granite columns, was designed by Jean-Baptiste Vallin de la Mothe and is the best-known part.

From 1918 to 2004 it belonged to the armed forces and was closed to the public. Since 2010 it has been owned by the Iris Foundation, and it has been turned into a public space with galleries and cafés, quite unlike the imperial center.

Saint Petersburg is a city of courtyards, dvory, and of rooftops, and both are tempting. The honest advice is to do it the legal way. Many courtyards are private, so don't follow a resident through a locked door. Roof walking has no official permission: no law bans it outright, but police have fined unofficial roof guides, an organizer was detained in 2026, and in 2020 a tourist and a guide died on a roof.

The safe versions exist. St Isaac's colonnade is the easiest. Some operators run tours on a roof on Ligovsky Prospect fitted with railings and agreed with the emergency ministry, and the Hermitage was reported years ago to plan legal roof walks, though no current tour could be confirmed. Restaurants and bars with roof terraces are another option.

Eat early around the theater, because performances start in the evening. Look for a place with fast service, such as a Georgian restaurant with khinkali and khachapuri, or a Russian one where you can finally try beef Stroganoff in the country it comes from.

The Mariinsky Theatre opened in 1860 and is where many of the stage works of Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky and Rimsky-Korsakov were first performed. In the Soviet era it was called the Kirov Theatre. Today it is the home of the Mariinsky Ballet, Opera and Orchestra, led by Valery Gergiev.

A ballet here is a good way to end the trip. The program depends on the evening, so check what is playing before you plan the day around it.