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 “It’s
in Russia – but it’s not Russian!”
fumed Tsar Nikolai I, hitting the nail directly on
the head. Visitors in the last decade of the C18th
would have found a mosquito-infested swamp…
twenty years later it was Europe’s most
fashionable new capital, and all thanks to its
founder, Tsar Peter the Great (with a little help
from Swedish POW’s drafted-in as forced
labour).
Hell-bent on dragging Russia out of the C15th
directly into the C18th (Peter even banned beards
– “too regressive!”),
Europe’s top architects, designers, composers,
and thinkers were invited to build a new capital for
Russia – regardless of cost. Russia’s
aristocracy were bludgeoned and blackmailed into
participating, and picking up the bill for it all.
The result was a grandiose city that fused the
boulevards of Paris with the canals of Venice, the
parks and squares of London, the palaces of Prague,
and the social and cultural life of the whole of
civilised Europe. Russian Imperial conquests in the
next two hundred years bolstered St
Petersburg’s position as the glittering gem at
the centre of Europe’s wealthiest Empire
– and hardly an onion-dome church in sight
until the 1880’s.
 Much of
this great glory looks a little faded today, but
alongside it is St Petersburg’s
“other” face as the
“alternative” capital of Russia… a
soviet-era tradition of “dissent far enough
away from Moscow’s control” that still
continues. St Pete’s is the centre for
rock-music, jazz, new-age philosophy and arts... and
also a booming café-culture, and all at prices
that leave you smiling even when the bill comes. Add
the legacy of some of the country’s pre-eminent
art and artefact collections in the Hermitage and the
Russian Museums, and you have a potent mixture you
shouldn’t miss! St Petersburg is still
“not Russian” just yet – but it
remains exactly what its founder wanted it to be,
“our window onto Europe”.
St Petersburg celebrates its 300th Anniversary in
2003, and demand for accommodation is expected to be
acute – we strongly recommend booking early to
get your first choice, and you may find we can only
offer alternatives unless you do so. The period May
15 – June 6th is already officially blacked-out
for foreigners because of the delegates attending the
G8 conference over this period.
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