Every story about St Petersburg starts on this small island in the Neva. In May 1703, during the war with Sweden, an earth fortress was laid down here to guard the river mouth, and the city grew up around it. The fortress never fought a battle. Instead it became the burial place of the emperors and, for two centuries, the empire’s most feared prison.
The Ioannovsky Bridge. You meet where the city’s first street crossed onto the island at 10:00, then enter as visitors always have, through the ravelin and Domenico Trezzini’s Peter’s Gate.
The walls and bastions. Six bastions named after Peter I and his companions. Your guide explains how bastions, curtain walls and ravelins worked together, and why this design was the height of military science for a century.
The Peter and Paul Cathedral. Trezzini built the bell tower first so the new capital would have a landmark at once. The gilded spire with its angel rises 122.5 metres. Inside lie nearly all the emperors from Peter I to Alexander III, and since 1998 Nicholas II and his family. Next door is the Grand Ducal burial vault, added when the cathedral ran out of space.
Curiosities. Mikhail Shemyakin’s controversial 1991 statue of Peter I, with its tiny head and long fingers, and the Boat House, built for the little boat Peter called “the grandfather of the Russian navy”.
The prison. Tsarevich Alexei was its first prisoner in 1718. Later came the Decembrists, the young Dostoevsky, Bakunin, Chernyshevsky and Gorky, about fifteen hundred political prisoners in all before 1917. The Trubetskoy Bastion prison of 1872 was the empire’s main political jail.
The Neva Gate. The tour ends at the Commandant’s Pier, with flood marks on the granite and the best view of Palace Embankment. A signal gun fires from the Naryshkin Bastion every day at noon, so with good timing you will hear it.
First-time visitors who want to start at the beginning, families with children, and anyone interested in the Romanovs or Russian political history.
The Ioannovsky Bridge
| People | Price per person |
|---|---|
| 1 | $98 |
| 2 | $62 |
| 3 | $50 |
| 4 | $44 |
| 5 | $41 |
| 6 | $39 |
| 7 | $37 |
| People | Price per person |
|---|---|
| 8 | $36 |
| 9 | $35 |
| 10 | $34 |
| 11–12 | $33 |
| 13–14 | $32 |
| 15–16 | $31 |
| People | Free places | Price per person |
|---|---|---|
| 10–14 | +1 | $29 |
| 15–24 | +2 | $27 |
| 25–34 | +2 | $26 |
| 35–40 | +3 | $25 |
Group rates apply from 10 people.
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.