Znayu mestoI know a place
RUENESTR中文عربيفارسی
Русский English Español Türkçe 中文 العربية فارسی

Walking routes in Saint Petersburg

    🚶 Routes 📍 Places
    Where do you start
    Start typing an address, metro station or place in the search box above — or tap the map where you will start
    How much walking
    Interests
    Child's age pick one or more
    Food we'll pick places along the way
      ← All routes

      Scientific Petersburg: Mendeleev, soils, a whale and the stars

      ⏱ 9 h🚶 3.5 km + 🚇🍽 3📍 8 stops
      🚶 Moderate — 3–7 km

      University Vasilyevsky, museums under a roof and an evening at Planetarium No. 1.

      👶 With kids🏛 History and architecture☔️ If it rains
      👶 7–12, 13+ years · ✗ hard with a stroller

      The Mendeleev Museum and the Soil Science Museum are on the upper floors of historic buildings, up the stairs; the metro stations on Vasilyevsky Island have no lifts — better to take a taxi to the Planetarium.

      🗺 Open in Yandex Maps (with transit)
      1. 1
        ☕️ Stolle on the 1st Line
        1-я линия В.О., 50
        ▮▯▯▯▯
        Breakfast: pies
        🍴 A pie shop of the Petersburg Stolle chain (since 2002): pies by old Russian recipes, whole or by the slice, sweet and savoury. What to order: a mushroom pie, a fish pie, a chocolate pie.
      2. 🚶 on foot
      3. 2
        🖼 Mendeleev Museum and Archive, St Petersburg State University
        Санкт-Петербург, Менделеевская линия, 2 (Университетская наб., 7/9)
        🎟 ticket · visits are by guided tour, by appointment
        Mendeleev's memorial apartment and study in the Twelve Collegia building: his desk, archive and the first periodic tables.
        Mendeleev’s study — by appointment
        📖 More about the placeCollapse
        Mendeleev Museum and Archive, St Petersburg State University
        © Argutie · CC BY-SA 4.0
        Mendeleev Museum and Archive, St Petersburg State University
        © Александровы АГ · CC BY-SA 4.0
        Mendeleev Museum and Archive, St Petersburg State University
        © Александровы АГ · CC BY-SA 4.0
        • Mendeleev lived with his family in this university-owned apartment from 1866 to 1890.
        • The decision to make a museum was taken by the First Mendeleev Congress in 1907, and it opened on 21 December 1911.
        • For the scientist's 100th anniversary in 1934, the exhibition was prepared by his son Ivan Mendeleev.
        • After the war the archive was sorted by the scientist's youngest daughter, Maria Mendeleeva-Kuzmina.
        • In 2019 the European Physical Society included the museum in its list of "EPS Historic Sites".
      4. 🚶 on foot
      5. 3
        🖼 Dokuchaev Central Soil Science Museum
        Санкт-Петербург, Биржевой проезд, 6
        🎟 ticket · tours by appointment; free on several commemorative dates
        The world's oldest soil museum: soil monoliths from every continent and the underground exhibition "Underground Kingdom".
        Soil monoliths
        📖 More about the placeCollapse
        Dokuchaev Central Soil Science Museum
        © Екатерина Борисова · CC BY-SA 3.0
        • Dokuchaev voiced the idea of a soil museum in 1879, lamenting that Russia did not even have an incomplete collection of soils.
        • The museum at the Free Economic Society was established in 1902 and opened in 1904; the first curator was Pavel Ototsky.
        • The collection of monoliths has been gathered since 1902 — it includes soils from the Arctic to New Zealand.
        • The 1924 flood destroyed or damaged a third of the collections stored in the basement.
        • In 1941 the curator Gennady Boch, together with an elderly doorman, boarded up the museum's huge windows with shields.
        • The museum received its premises at Birzhevoy Proyezd 6 in 1950.
      6. 🚶 on foot
      7. 4
        🖼 Zoological Museum
        Университетская наб., 1
        🎟 ticket
        A blue whale skeleton and a baby mammoth
        The blue whale
        📖 More about the placeCollapse
        Zoological Museum
        © Екатерина Борисова · CC BY-SA 4.0
        Zoological Museum
        © Thomon · CC BY-SA 4.0
        Zoological Museum
        © Ad Meskens · CC BY-SA 4.0
        • It is the oldest zoological museum in Russia and one of the three largest in the world; its core was made up of the Kunstkamera collections.
        • The official founding date is 1832, and the museum opened in the building of the Exchange's southern warehouse on 19 February 1901.
        • The blue whale skeleton in the first hall is 27 m long.
        • The "mammoth hall" holds a mount and skeleton of the Berezovka mammoth and the mummies of the baby mammoths Dima and Masha, about 40,000 years old.
        • Among the rarities are the skeleton of the extinct Steller's sea cow and a mounted Tasmanian wolf.
        • The display collection has about 30,000 items, more than 10,000 of them insects in the gallery of the first hall.
      8. 🚶 on foot
      9. 5
        🖼 Kunstkamera
        Университетская наб., 3
        🎟 ticket
        A turquoise building with an openwork tower — Peter's anatomical rarities and the ethnography of the world's peoples.
        Russia’s first museum
        📖 More about the placeCollapse
        Kunstkamera
        © Никонико962 · CC BY-SA 4.0
        • The founding date is considered to be 1714, when Peter's collection was placed in the Chambers by the Summer Palace.
        • The present Petrine Baroque building was built from 1718 to 1734, begun by Georg Mattarnovy.
        • Peter bought the anatomical collection of over 2,000 items in 1717 from the Dutch anatomist Frederik Ruysch.
        • Peter's decree of 1718 promised a reward for delivering “monsters” and unusual things and threatened a fine for hiding them.
        • In the fire of 5 December 1747 the tower, the observatory and the interior finishes burned; the building was restored by Savva Chevakinsky.
        • Mikhail Lomonosov worked in the building — a separate exhibition is devoted to him, with the Academy of Sciences' meeting hall.
        • The tower is crowned with an armillary sphere — a model of the celestial sphere made of rings.
      10. 🚶 on foot
      11. 6
        🍽 Casa del Myaso
        Биржевой проезд, 6
        ▮▮▮▯▯
        Lunch
        🍴 A meat restaurant in an old warehouse on the Malaya Neva, a couple of steps from the Strelka of Vasilyevsky Island. What to order: beef tartare, strip loin steak, brisket, pappardelle with crab.
      12. 🚇 ≈20 min on foot across Birzhevoy Bridge to Sportivnaya metro, metro to Obvodny Kanal (purple line), 4 stops, ≈12 min on foot; or taxi ≈20 min
      13. 7
        ✨ Planetarium No. 1
        наб. Обводного канала, 74Ц
        🎟 ticket
        The biggest dome in the world — inside an old gasholder
        A dome in a gasholder
        📖 More about the placeCollapse
        Planetarium No. 1
        © Никонико962 · CC BY-SA 4.0
        • The planetarium opened on 3 November 2017 in a gasholder of the Main Gas Works of the Capital Lighting Society.
        • The empty building was spotted by chance in 2015 by the entrepreneur Yevgeny Gudov while walking along the Obvodny Canal.
        • The gasholder itself is a brick cylinder 20 m high and 42 m across, a federal monument since 2001.
        • The dome's frame is assembled from 1,500 wooden beams and 507 steel “Haeckels” — joints named after the naturalist Ernst Haeckel.
        • The dome is 2 metres wider than that of the planetarium in Nagoya, Japan, the previous Guinness record holder.
        • The image on the dome is produced by 40 projectors with 8K resolution.
      14. 🚶 on foot
      15. 8
        🍜 Vokzal 1853 food hall · 🧸 play area
        наб. Обводного канала, 118С
        ▮▮▯▯▯
        Dinner at the Vokzal 1853 food mall
        🍴 A food hall with 90+ stalls in the Warsaw Railway Station building of 1853, with a cinema, a games room and the MTS Live Hall concert venue. What to order: Korean ramen, Israeli bagels, a hot dog with smelt, Hong Kong waffles.

      Find us on Telegram

      Partnerships and ideas

      ✉️ privet@znayumesto.ru

      Settings

      Data: © OpenStreetMap · DB-IP · weather — Open-Meteo
      The map did not load. You can still browse routes in the list and open them in Yandex Maps.

      We use cookies and Yandex Metrica to understand which routes are useful. Without your consent we keep only our own cookie-free statistics.