St. Petersburg is just a beautiful jewel. It is a relatively new city that is less than 300 years old. It was the brainchild of Peter the Great who selected the swampy ground in 1703 where the Neva River flowed into the Gulf of Finland (click on thumbnail picture of the Neva at right to enlarge it).  Peter the Great commissioned the famous Italian architect Domenico Trezzine to design the city. Because of the swampy nature of the ground many drainage canals had to be dug and eventually 44 island were created within St. Petersburg (See picture at right side). Peter the Great who believed in the value of low cost  transportation by boat made the canals large enough to be used to transport by boat heavy goods to various parts of the city. The net result was a beautiful city that is often referred to as a second Venice. Because of the flow of water through the canals in St. Petersburg, the water in the canals is clean which makes an excursion boat trip through the canal system a very pleasant and leisurely experience to view the many beautiful and historic buildings along the canal system. I was always in a greater hurry and got around the city mostly by a very efficient subway system. I also used the streetcars, buses and suburban electric trains.                                                                          

Since Peter the Great made St. Petersburg the capital of Russia in 1712 and until the capital was moved to Moscow by the Soviets in 1918 for security reasons, very many impressive palaces and buildings were built. What was even more impressive to see was that the buildings have been preserved in the downtown part of St. Petersburg and for many of them, the exteriors have been restored to their original beauty. Two of the palaces that most impressed me were the Hermitage (Winter Palace) and Mihajlovskij Sad (see pictures at right side) that have had the interiors restored and are now museums and art galleries. Other restored famous palaces now house government services and offices. The combination of the River Neva, the canals,  the Hermitage, Peter and Paul Fortress, Revolution Square, the cathedrals. and the famous Nevsky Street makes downtown St. Petersburg into one of the most beautiful cities that I have ever seen.

About 25 to 30 kilometers out of the city center, the Czars, Czarinas and their families in the 18^th an19th Centuries built some very beautiful summer palaces. I visited 3 of the most famous which included Peterhof on the Gulf of Finland, Tsarskoye Selo  about 25 KM south of St. Petersburg and Povlovsk just 5 KM south of Tsarskoye Selo (see pictures at right side). These palaces  were extensively destroyed during World War 2 but have now been carefully restored to their originally beauty. I took a lot of pictures of these palaces so that I could show the extraordinary beauty of these palaces. I liked the Russian Boroque architecture of Peterhof and the Tsarskoye Selo that were trimmed in bright colours and gold. The fountains and cascades at Peterhof are something to see especially since they have remained virtually unchanged since they were designed and completed by Peter the Great in 1721. In those days there were no pumps and the water flowed strictly by gravity through a system of communicating vessels as it does today.

After an extraordinary week of seeing so many beautiful things in St. Petersburg, I took the overnight sleeping car train to Moscow. I traveled in a four-berth compartment that was very comfortable for sleeping. My companions in the compartment were a Russian student from Moscow and a New Zealander who was on a worldwide tour.

More pictures of St. Petersburg can be seen by clicking additional pictures of St. Petersburg

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