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It is said that Russia's second city, St. Petersburg, is not really a Russian city at all, but an elegant European upstart implanted on the breast of Mother Russia. Moscow is five centuries older than St. Petersburg and is twice as populous [ten million as opposed to five]. Nonetheless, the real reason for denying St. Petersburg's right to be Russian is not one of logic, but one of emotion. It is a very simple, very Russian, case of jealousy.

Most Russian cities, scarred by the lunatic legacy of Stalin, are bleak and gray affairs. By contrast, St. Petersburg is one of the world's most beautiful metropoli. Situated just ninety miles from the Gulf of Finland, near enough for Helsinki residents to fly in for weekend holidays, the beauty of the museum city has often been compared to that of Amsterdam and Venice.

St. Petersburg was founded in 1703 by Russia's famous son, Tsar Peter the Great, the man who almost single-handedly pulled Russia out of the Middle Ages. Designed by many of Europe's finest architects, including the brilliant Italian Rastrelli, the city is today a beguiling architectural ensemble of baroque, rococo and classical styles. Fanning across the broad delta of the Neva River, St. Petersburg has more bridges than there are days in the year. At each midnight stroke, the larger bridges are raised to allow ships to leave for the Gulf of Finland and the Baltic Sea beyond. It also allow drinkers and, diners, and lovers, to continue another several hours, till the bridges close again.

For the traveller, St. Petersburg's beautiful buildings, its charming canals and its elegant bridges, make it a wonderfully walkable place, but the city offers more than just architectural splendor. It is drenched in Russian history. Its namesake, Peter the Great, is himself buried here, as are most Tsars and Tsarinas. The Russian ballet was born here. Tchaikovsky created 'Swan Lake' and 'Sleeping Beauty', and Dostoyevsky set 'Crime and Punishment' here. St. Petersburg was also the home of Count Stroganoff, whose resourceful personal chef, his name lost to history, invented Russia's most celebrated beef dish.

On the flip side of Russia's cultural coin, the mad Siberian monk Rasputin, who claimed to have cured Tsar Nicholas' haemophiliac son, was finally assassinated here. He was first poisoned, then shot, then stabbed, before finally being pushed below the ice of the Neva [and still wouldn’t die until left to perish through exposure]. The Russians are nothing if not thorough.

It was also in St. Petersburg that those notorious trouble-makers, Leon Trotsky and Vladimir Lenin, introduced Marxism into Russia from Germany. After Lenin's death in 1924, the city was renamed Leningrad; the original name was only restored in 1991 by overwhelming demand.

Even the infamous 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, which brought seventy years of misery to the Russian people, began not in the twisting streets of Moscow, but in the long elegant avenues of St. Petersburg. The first shot fired in the coup was discharged here: an artillery shell hurled at the Tsar's Winter Palace, from a cruiser anchored in the river.

St. Petersburg offers great contrast between winter and summer seasons. From January to March, it is a silent, somewhat lonely, but serenely beautiful city, for Russian winter brilliance is indeed dazzling. The Russians are connoisseurs of the cold; they casually queue to eat ice cream, even in mid-winter. Throughout the chilly months young women stroll down the snow-muffled streets fashionably bundled in lambskin and leather.

Visitors lucky enough to be in St. Petersburg during the Russian Christmas [which takes place in early January], will find the city's lovely old churches filled with the warm amber glow and sweet fragrance of thousands of white candles - their soft flickering light illuminating the hundreds of old saintly icons which adorn the walls and even ceilings.

After mass, icicle-bright crystal clear winter afternoons are given over to wonderfully boozy parties where visitors are always welcome, or to traditional troika (horse-drawn sleigh) rides along the snowy trails in the deep pine and birch forests which encircle the city.

While winter cloaks the city in a dream-like milky whiteness, St. Petersburg's most popular season is summer. The city's latitude, the same as Alaska's, heralds its celebrated days of "white nights" in late June when the northern sun truly never sets, and the streets are bathed in a soft silver glow - bright enough to read a book in the middle of the night. This is when the city's young people party with summer festivals.

In a city agog with glorious churches and palaces, it's preposterous to suggest that one structure is more alluring than any other. However, St. Petersburg's most imposing monument is surely Tsar Peter's fabulous Winter Palace, which rises above the banks of the Neva as a story book castle. Designed for the greater glory of all Russia, and painted in gleaming gold and bitter green, the palace extends for nearly two kilometers, boasts over one thousand rooms, two thousand windows and more than a hundred staircases. When elderly residents stroll past this elegant edifice, they can still be seen blowing silent kisses to the soul of Russia's greatest son.

Known now as the Hermitage Museum, the Palace houses perhaps the largest collection of fine art ever assembled in one place. There are over two million items, including works by Leonardo Da Vinci, Rembrandt, Rubens, Renoir, Monet, Van Gogh, Gaugin, Goya, Matisse and Picasso. The initial collection was started by Catherine the Great as a personal hobby. A regular correspondent of Voltaire's, she once wrote to the French philosopher claiming that her collection was so large that "only the mice and I can enjoy it all."

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