Text 8. St. Petersburg

Population – 5 million. If Moscow is Europe’s most Asiatic capital, St. Petersburg is Russia’s most European city. Created by Peter the Great as his “window on the west” at the only point where traditional Russian territory meets a sea-way to Northern Europe, it was built with the 18^th and 19^th century pomp and orderliness by mainly European architects. The result is a city that remains one of Europe’s most beautiful: where Moscow intimidates, St. Petersburg enchants.

The vistas of elegant buildings across the wide Neva River and along the Canals and avenues recall Paris, Amsterdam, Venice and Berlin. But St. Petersburg, happily little harmed by Stalin’s reconstruction, is a brand of all its own.

The jolly onion domes of Moscow seem almost passé here, where a more Western outlook was taken at every stage of planning and construction. Even the city’s colours – the green and gold of the Winter Palace, the red beside the Anichkov Bridge, the blue of Smolny Cathedral – reflect a closer stylistic allegiance to the courts of Europe than to the Kremlin. The building’s playful Baroque facades exude the riotous opulence of tsarist Russia. Today, despite their well-publicized problems, residents feel enough affection for their city to call it simply “Peter”.

St. Petersburg is chock-full of history: from here autocratic tsars ruled Russia for two centuries with the splendour and stubbornness that led to their downfall.

The city’s two centuries as Russia’s capital bequeathed it an artistic and entertainment scene which still at least equals Moscow’s. Russian ballet was born in St. Petersburg and the 19^th century flowering of Russian music was centred here. Nejinsky, Tchaikovsky and Rimsky-Korsakov, to name but a few, spent important periods here. Pushkin was educated in, exiled from and killed in St. Petersburg; Dostoevsky set “Crime and Punishment” here.

At one end of the cultural spectrum today are the Hermitage, one of the world’s great art galleries, housed in the tsar’s superb Winter Palace, and the Kirov Ballet, which has been recently overshadowed by Moscow’s Bolshoy. At the other end, St. Petersburg has produced many of Russia’s top rock bands; young citizens spend sultry summer evenings partying in dozens of Western-style night-clubs with laser shows, top dance hits and DJs imported from the UK, Sweden and, in many cases, Africa.

For a change of pace, venture out to one of the sublime suburban palaces and parks such as Petrodvorets or Pavlovsk.

St. Petersburg’s latitude – level with Seaward, Alaska, and Cape Farewell, Greenland – gives it nearly 24 – hour day light in midsummer but long, grey winters. From June to August, when temperatures usually reach 20 C, the city is absolutely packed with foreign and Russian tourists. From December to March, when temperatures rarely exceed freezing, the long nights seem endless.