Two days is enough to see the essential St Petersburg properly, provided the days are split the right way. The first stays inside the historic centre, where everything is close together. The second is spent out of town at two imperial residences, which need a car and a fixed timetable. Your guide meets you in the hotel lobby each morning, and the tickets for every site are already arranged.
Morning in the centre. The day starts with a drive along Nevsky Prospect and the Neva embankments, with stops to walk and take photographs. You go inside the Church on Spilled Blood, raised where Alexander II was fatally wounded in 1881 and covered inside with some 7,000 square metres of mosaic. Then you cross to the Peter and Paul Fortress, where the city was founded in 1703, and see the cathedral where the Romanovs are buried, from Peter I to Nicholas II. If you are there at noon, you will hear the cannon fired from the Naryshkin Bastion.
Lunch. A break around midday, paid separately.
Afternoon at the Hermitage. Three million objects and six connected buildings cannot be covered in one visit, so you follow the ceremonial route. It takes in the Jordan Staircase, the throne rooms, the Hanging Garden and the Raphael Loggias, a copy of the Vatican gallery made for Catherine II. Look out for the Peacock Clock, an eighteenth-century automaton that still works. You are back at your hotel by about five.
Morning at Peterhof. A drive along the gulf brings you to the Lower Park and its 147 fountains, all fed by gravity from springs twenty-four kilometres away rather than by pumps. You walk from the Grand Cascade and the gilded Samson down the Sea Canal to the water.
Lunch. Another break, paid separately.
Afternoon in Pushkin. Rastrelli’s Catherine Palace, its facade 325 metres long, and the Amber Room. The original panels were lost after the war; the room was recreated between 1981 and 2003. You are back at your hotel by about half past five.
First-time visitors with a long weekend, cruise and train travellers with two full days in the city, and families who want the main sights covered without having to plan the transport and tickets themselves.
Your guide will meet you in the lobby of your hotel
Skim across the Gulf of Finland by Meteor hydrofoil in forty minutes, then walk Peterhof's Lower Park with its 147 fountains. Boat and park tickets included.
A three-and-a-half-hour drive through the centre, ending on Hare Island where the city was founded in 1703, with entry to the Romanov burial cathedral.
A private two-hour walk through the Mikhailovsky Palace: a thousand years of Russian art, from medieval icons to The Ninth Wave and Repin's Barge Haulers.
Visit the Konstantinovsky Palace at Strelna, a working state residence that hosted the G8 and G20 summits, by car with a guide and entry arranged.