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Walking routes in Saint Petersburg

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      Petersburg in one day: the essentials

      ⏱ 11 h🚶 7 km🍽 3📍 10 stops
      🚶 Moderate — 3–7 km

      For a first acquaintance: pyshki, the Hermitage, the Saviour on Spilled Blood, St Isaac’s colonnade and dinner by the Mariinsky — and the bridges rising at night.

      🏛 History and architecture🎨 Art
      🗺 Open in Yandex Maps
      1. 1
        ☕️ Pyshechnaya on Bolshaya Konyushennaya
        Б. Конюшенная ул., 25
        ▮▯▯▯▯
        Breakfast: pyshki and coffee from the urn
        🍴 A Leningrad-style doughnut shop with a Soviet interior and an unchanged recipe since 1958, everything served at the counter. What to order: pyshki (Petersburg doughnuts) with powdered sugar, coffee with condensed milk from the urn, tea.
      2. 🚶 on foot
      3. 2
        🏛 Church of the Savior on Blood
        наб. канала Грибоедова, 2Б
        🎟 ticket
        A colorful church in the Old Russian style with enamel and gilded domes on the spot where Alexander II was wounded.
        Mosaics before the tour groups arrive
        📖 More about the placeCollapse
        Church of the Savior on Blood
        © Wolfgang Moroder · CC BY-SA 3.0
        Church of the Savior on Blood
        © Florstein · CC BY-SA 4.0
        • The church, 81 meters tall, took 24 years to build — from 1883 to 1907.
        • Alexander III rejected the designs of two competitions and approved the design by Alfred Parland and Archimandrite Ignaty (Malyshev).
        • The mosaics were made by Vladimir Frolov's workshop from sketches by more than 30 artists, among them Viktor Vasnetsov and Mikhail Nesterov.
        • During the siege the church was used as a morgue, and after the war as a scenery warehouse of the Maly Opera Theater.
        • In 1961 steeplejacks found a German high-explosive shell in the central dome, which had lain there for 18 years.
        • The museum opened on 19 August 1997 — exactly 90 years after the church was consecrated.
      4. 🚶 on foot
      5. 3
        🏛 Palace Square
        The city's main square between the Winter Palace and the arc of the General Staff Building with the Triumphal Arch.
        The Alexander Column
        📖 More about the placeCollapse
        Palace Square
        © Mikhey77777 · CC BY-SA 4.0
        • From 1918 to 1944 the square was called Uritsky Square, after the head of the Petrograd Cheka, killed by the General Staff Building.
        • On 16 June 1766 Catherine II held a Carousel here — an equestrian festival-tournament with Rinaldi's wooden amphitheater seating several thousand.
        • The granite monolith of the Alexander Column is not fixed in any way and stays on its pedestal under its own weight alone.
        • In 1924 it was decided to replace the angel on the column with a figure of Lenin, but after a year of discussion the project was dropped.
        • The east side of the square is closed off by the Guards Corps headquarters, built by Alexander Bryullov in 1837–1843.
        • In 1932 the square's cobblestones were paved over with asphalt, and the diabase-cobble paving was restored only in 1977.
        • In autumn 1941 they seriously discussed making an airfield for fighters on the square by moving the column, but dropped the idea.
      6. 🚶 on foot
      7. 4
        🖼 State Hermitage (Winter Palace)
        Дворцовая пл., 2
        🎟 ticket · free for concession holders on the third Thursday of the month
        Rastrelli's turquoise-and-white palace on the Neva — the tsars' main residence, now one of the largest museums in the world.
        3 hours: the Jordan Staircase, the Peacock, Rembrandt
        📖 More about the placeCollapse
        State Hermitage (Winter Palace)
        © Никонико962 · CC BY-SA 4.0
        State Hermitage (Winter Palace)
        © Ludvig14 · CC BY-SA 4.0
        • The Hermitage dates from 1764, when 317 paintings of the merchant Gotzkowsky were handed to Catherine II from Berlin in settlement of a debt.
        • The present Winter Palace is the fifth one: built in 1754–1762, it became the tallest residential building in St Petersburg and had about 1,500 rooms.
        • The fire of 1837 destroyed all the palace's interiors, but under Stasov and Bryullov it was restored in just two years.
        • The Jordan Entrance is named after the "Jordan" ice hole: at Epiphany the royal family went out through it onto the ice of the Neva.
        • On 5 February 1880 the Narodnaya Volya member Stepan Khalturin set off a bomb in the palace, aiming at Alexander II: 11 guard soldiers died, the emperor was unharmed.
        • From October 1915 to November 1917 a hospital named for Tsarevich Alexei operated in the Winter Palace's state rooms.
        • The Hermitage collection was evacuated during the war, and not a single exhibit was lost.
      8. 🚶 on foot
      9. 5
        ☕️ Singer House and Café René
        Невский пр., 28
        ▮▮▮▯▯
        Lunch with a view of Kazan Cathedral
        🍴 A Russian-French café, René, on the 2nd floor of the House of Books (Singer House) from the Aster team, with windows onto Kazan Cathedral, breakfasts in the morning and a pastry counter. What to order: vareniki, gratin with Gruyère, onion soup, pyshki or a croissant with coffee.
      10. 🚶 on foot
      11. 6
        🏛 Kazan Cathedral
        Казанская пл., 2
        Voronikhin's huge cathedral of grey Pudost stone, with a semicircle of 96 columns on Nevsky Prospekt.
        The colonnade and Kutuzov
        📖 More about the placeCollapse
        Kazan Cathedral
        © Flamel123 · CC BY-SA 4.0
        • The architect Andrey Voronikhin was a former serf of Count Stroganov, who freed him and sent him to study in Paris and Geneva.
        • In 1813 Field Marshal Mikhail Kutuzov was buried in the cathedral's left side chapel.
        • After 1812 trophies were brought to the cathedral: French banners, keys of captured cities and Marshal Davout's baton.
        • In 1834–1836 the iconostasis was clad in silver that Platov's Cossacks had taken from the French; it was melted down in 1922.
        • The monuments to Kutuzov and Barclay de Tolly by Boris Orlovsky were unveiled in 1837, on the 25th anniversary of the victory over Napoleon.
        • From 1932 it housed the Museum of the History of Religion and Atheism, and the first service after the break was held on 4 November 1990.
        • In 1893 the funeral service for Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky was held in the cathedral.
      12. 🚶 on foot
      13. 7
        🏛 St Isaac's Cathedral and its colonnade
        Исаакиевская пл., 4
        🎟 ticket · The cathedral and the climb to the colonnade need separate tickets
        In summer the colonnade is also open at night
        Climb up to the colonnade
        📖 More about the placeCollapse
        St Isaac's Cathedral and its colonnade
        © A.Savin · CC BY-SA 3.0
        • The cathedral is consecrated in the name of St Isaac of Dalmatia because Peter I was born on his feast day, 30 May.
        • According to legend, Montferrand was told he would die right after finishing the cathedral, so the construction dragged on for 40 years, from 1818 to 1858.
        • Each 17-metre, 114-tonne column was raised into place in 40–45 minutes.
        • During the fire-gilding of the dome in 1838–1841, 60 craftsmen died of mercury vapour poisoning.
        • From 1931 to 1986 a Foucault pendulum on a 98-metre cable swung in the cathedral, showing the rotation of the Earth.
        • The cathedral's dome was the third in the world built on a metal frame.
        • The white marble iconostasis is decorated with malachite and Badakhshan lapis lazuli.
      14. 🚶 on foot
      15. 8
        🏛 The Bronze Horseman
        Сенатская пл.
        Falconet's equestrian statue of Peter I on a rock pedestal, facing the Neva.
        The Bronze Horseman on Senate Square
        📖 More about the placeCollapse
        The Bronze Horseman
        © Florstein · CC BY-SA 4.0
        The Bronze Horseman
        © Никонико962 · CC BY-SA 4.0
        • The monument was unveiled on 7 (18) August 1782, on the centenary of Peter I's accession to the throne.
        • The statue is cast in bronze; it was Pushkin's poem that made it ‘copper’.
        • Falconet couldn't get Peter's head right, and it was modelled by his pupil Marie-Anne Collot.
        • The snake under the hooves was added as a third point of support for stability; it was modelled by Fyodor Gordeyev.
        • The pedestal is the “Thunder Stone”, a boulder from near Konnaya Lakhta, delivered to the square in 1770.
        • The inscription “To Peter the First from Catherine the Second” was devised by the empress, who struck the word “erected” from Falconet's version.
        • According to legend, during the casting in 1775 the pipe with bronze burst, and the master Yemelyan Khailov saved the lower part of the statue.
      16. 🚶 on foot
      17. 9
        🍽 Teplo restaurant · 🧸 play area
        Б. Морская ул., 45
        ▮▮▮▯▯
        Dinner — book ahead
        🍴 A living-room restaurant in the House of Composers: several cosy rooms with a homey feel, home cooking and their own baking. What to order: chicken liver salad, draniki with salmon, a curd cheese bake, the “Aunt Tanya” sponge cake.
      18. 🚶 on foot
      19. 10
        🌅 Palace Bridge
        Raised during the navigation season (April–November) at about 1:10
        The bridges go up around 1:10 (April–November)
        📖 More about the placeCollapse
        Palace Bridge
        © Vyacheslav Bukharov · CC BY-SA 4.0
        Palace Bridge
        © Александровы АГ · CC BY-SA 4.0
        Palace Bridge
        © Safa.daneshvar · CC BY 4.0
        • The permanent bridge opened on 23 December 1916 unfinished, with “temporary” wooden railings.
        • The cast-iron railings replaced the wooden ones only in 1939.
        • The design by engineer Andrzej Pshenitsky of the Kolomna Works Society was chosen for construction.
        • Before opening, the bridge was tested by driving 34 loaded trucks onto all its spans at once.
        • From 1918 to 1944 the bridge was called the Republican Bridge.
        • The earlier floating Palace Bridge, moved to Senate Square, burned down in 1916 from a spark from a passing tug.
        • The tram tracks were removed from the bridge in 1997.

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