“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.