Saint Petersburg

Why go

The Mariinsky — two centuries of ballet and opera, and the company that produced most of the canon. A city built at once — an imperial capital laid out from 1703 on a single plan, on marsh. The Hermitage — three million objects in the Winter Palace and four adjoining buildings. White nights — in June the sky never fully darkens and the city stays up with it.

The character

Peter the Great founded Saint Petersburg in 1703 on Baltic marshland taken from Sweden, and forced its construction with conscripted labour and a decree banning stone building anywhere else in Russia. Within twenty years it was the capital; within a century it was a European city of granite embankments, Italian architects and French as a court language — a deliberate argument, built at enormous human cost, about what Russia would be.

The Mariinsky is the clearest expression of that project. Founded in 1783 and rebuilt in 1860, it developed the classical ballet repertoire under Petipa — The Sleeping Beauty, Swan Lake in its surviving form, La Bayadère — and its school produced Nijinsky, Pavlova, Balanchine and Nureyev. The company still performs on the historic stage and in a modern second house across the canal. The city around it is a museum of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that also went through the siege of 1941–44, when a million civilians died, and both facts are present in the same streets.

Places of character

Mariinsky Theatre — the historic hall in blue and gold; the ballet is the thing, and tickets are cheap by European standards. Hermitage — go twice rather than once, and take the Winter Palace state rooms as one visit and the paintings as another. Church of the Saviour on Spilled Blood — mosaic-covered inside and out, on the spot where Alexander II was assassinated. Peter and Paul Fortress — the city's founding point, with the imperial burial church and a cannon at noon. The canals by boat — Petersburg was planned around water, and the scale reads differently from below. Piskaryovskoye Memorial Cemetery — where half a million siege victims are buried in mass graves; the city's other truth.

The way to do it

Book the Mariinsky before anything else. Split the Hermitage across two mornings. Walk the canals and not only Nevsky Prospekt. And be honest about the season: the white nights in June are extraordinary and the city is packed; February is dark, cold and the theatres are at their best.

One perfect day

Coffee, then the Hermitage at opening for the state rooms while they are still quiet — the Jordan Staircase and the Malachite Room before the tours arrive. Out by noon. Lunch, then a canal boat for an hour to see the plan from the water. Afternoon at the Russian Museum for Russian painting, which most visitors skip and which explains more than the Hermitage does about the country. Early dinner. The Mariinsky at seven: a Petipa ballet on the stage it was made for. Afterwards, in June, walk the embankments at midnight in daylight.

Grand hotels

Grand Hotel Europe — 1875 on Nevsky, with an Art Nouveau restaurant and a guest list from Tchaikovsky onward. Astoria — 1912 facing St Isaac's, where Hitler planned a victory banquet he never held.

When to go

Best expression: late May to mid-July for the white nights and the Stars of the White Nights festival at the Mariinsky. Consider: February, when the theatre season is deep and the city is snow-covered and empty. Avoid if possible: November, when it is dark by three and neither snow nor light.

The frame

Ideal stay 4 nights · Minimum 3 nights · Best arrival the high-speed train from Moscow, four hours · Airport LED, 20 km · Walkability excellent and flat, with long distances · Best without a car yes