St. Isaac's Cathedral
Statue of Peter the Great
Canal View
Peterhof, an out-of-town palace for the Tsar, including Peter and Katherine the Great
Cathedral of the Resurrection of ChristFounded at the beginning of the 18th century as Peter the Great's "window onto Europe," St. Petersburg (a.k.a. Petrograd, Leningrad) served as the capital of Russia for the majority of the last 300 years. Today, it is Russia's second largest city and Europe's fourth. Due to its relative youth, St. Pete has a decidedly different feel than ancient Moscow, and it could probably be said that it is Russia's most "continental" city. Like many European capitals, this Baltic metropolis is quite compact and the streets are narrow, making it easily walkable.
We arrived at the city center - a unique mish-mash of stately classical structures and Stalinist monumentalism criss-crossed with canals - at around 11pm, and the sun was just starting to set. St. Pete's "White Nights" (Beliye Nochi) are truly amazing for a middle-latitude dweller like myself - I also found that it greatly exacerbates jet lag (when your body is used to darkness by 8, watching the sun go down in the hours before midnight really throws you off). It is a time of celebration and street festivals for Petersburgers and tourists alike, payback for the long frigid months of winter darkness.
Many large nations have an urban soul that is defined by the dynamic between their two chief cities. In America, for instance, New York and Los Angeles define the two extremes between which most other cities lie; their dissimilarity creates the tension of the American urban imagination, and most people tend to gravitate towards one model over the other. This sort of dynamic also exists in China (Beijing and Shanghai), Brazil (São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro), Japan (Tokyo and Osaka), and Russia. It is fascinating traveling with a local because you are able to get a glimpse of the hidden underbelly of a place. Although she was slow to admit it, Katya has an instinctual dislike of St. Petersburg, or more specifically, the people who live there, citing the city's "inferiority complex" and subsequent meanness towards Muscovites. To her, the city isn't quite "Russian" enough as well - it is rooted in modern Euro-fetishization and designed to a large degree by Italian and German architects and engineers; this is not at all the ancient Rus embodied in the old cities of Novgorod, Kiev, Vladimir, and Pskov. As the Russian city most visited by foreigners (cruise lines frequently stop here), there is also the concern that camera-toting tourists will spend an afternoon strolling through St. Pete's beautiful streets then go home with a false impression of the country. Just as New York and Los Angeles are both simultaneously unrepresentative of America and quintessentially American, the dynamic between Moscow and St. Pete is similarly wrought with this interesting tension.
Being an American well-traveled in the capitals of Europe and not a Muscovite with a keen ear to the spicy schism, St. Petersburg struck me as a beautiful, sophisticated, and lively city. Perhaps the very things that Katya dislikes about it are what makes it such a popular draw with foreigners - it is much more deeply familiar than Moscow and easier to understand. One feels they could be walking through Amsterdam, Brussels, or Prague here; it doesn't feel overwhelmingly "Russian."
Visiting St. Petersburg reinforces to me the importance of seeing both cities while traveling in Russia. Moscow (along with the ancient cities mentioned earlier) is the "Russian" half of the country, and St. Petersburg is the "European" half, but both cities are 100% Russian.
We arrived at the city center - a unique mish-mash of stately classical structures and Stalinist monumentalism criss-crossed with canals - at around 11pm, and the sun was just starting to set. St. Pete's "White Nights" (Beliye Nochi) are truly amazing for a middle-latitude dweller like myself - I also found that it greatly exacerbates jet lag (when your body is used to darkness by 8, watching the sun go down in the hours before midnight really throws you off). It is a time of celebration and street festivals for Petersburgers and tourists alike, payback for the long frigid months of winter darkness.
Many large nations have an urban soul that is defined by the dynamic between their two chief cities. In America, for instance, New York and Los Angeles define the two extremes between which most other cities lie; their dissimilarity creates the tension of the American urban imagination, and most people tend to gravitate towards one model over the other. This sort of dynamic also exists in China (Beijing and Shanghai), Brazil (São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro), Japan (Tokyo and Osaka), and Russia. It is fascinating traveling with a local because you are able to get a glimpse of the hidden underbelly of a place. Although she was slow to admit it, Katya has an instinctual dislike of St. Petersburg, or more specifically, the people who live there, citing the city's "inferiority complex" and subsequent meanness towards Muscovites. To her, the city isn't quite "Russian" enough as well - it is rooted in modern Euro-fetishization and designed to a large degree by Italian and German architects and engineers; this is not at all the ancient Rus embodied in the old cities of Novgorod, Kiev, Vladimir, and Pskov. As the Russian city most visited by foreigners (cruise lines frequently stop here), there is also the concern that camera-toting tourists will spend an afternoon strolling through St. Pete's beautiful streets then go home with a false impression of the country. Just as New York and Los Angeles are both simultaneously unrepresentative of America and quintessentially American, the dynamic between Moscow and St. Pete is similarly wrought with this interesting tension.
Being an American well-traveled in the capitals of Europe and not a Muscovite with a keen ear to the spicy schism, St. Petersburg struck me as a beautiful, sophisticated, and lively city. Perhaps the very things that Katya dislikes about it are what makes it such a popular draw with foreigners - it is much more deeply familiar than Moscow and easier to understand. One feels they could be walking through Amsterdam, Brussels, or Prague here; it doesn't feel overwhelmingly "Russian."
Visiting St. Petersburg reinforces to me the importance of seeing both cities while traveling in Russia. Moscow (along with the ancient cities mentioned earlier) is the "Russian" half of the country, and St. Petersburg is the "European" half, but both cities are 100% Russian.
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