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Saint Petersburg

Saint Petersburg,[a] formerly known as Petrograd and later Leningrad,[b] is the second-largest city in Russia after Moscow. It is situated on the River Neva, at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea. The city had a population of roughly 5.6 million residents as of 2021,[5] with more than 6.4 million people living in the metropolitan area. Saint Petersburg is the fourth-most populous city in Europe, the most populous city on the Baltic Sea, and the world's northernmost city of more than 1 million residents. As Russia's Imperial capital, and a historically strategic port, it is governed as a federal city.

This article is about the Russian city. For the American city, see St. Petersburg, Florida. For other uses, see Saint Petersburg (disambiguation).

Saint Petersburg
Санкт-Петербург

Russia

27 May 1703 (1703-05-27)[1]

1,439 km2 (556 sq mi)

3 m (10 ft)

Neutral increase 5,601,911

4th in Europe
2nd in Russia

3,992.81/km2 (10,341.3/sq mi)

Neutral increase 6,421,000[3][4]

Petersburgian

9.440 trillion
US$128 billion (2021)

₽1,754,423
US$23,804 (2021)

190000—199406

812

RU-SPE

78, 98, 178, 198

40

40000000

The city was founded by Tsar Peter the Great on 27 May 1703 on the site of a captured Swedish fortress, and was named after the apostle Saint Peter.[10] In Russia, Saint Petersburg is historically and culturally associated with the birth of the Russian Empire and Russia's entry into modern history as a European great power.[11] It served as a capital of the Tsardom of Russia, and the subsequent Russian Empire, from 1712 to 1918 (being replaced by Moscow for a short period of time between 1728 and 1730).[12] After the October Revolution in 1917, the Bolsheviks moved their government to Moscow.[13] The city was renamed Leningrad after Lenin's death in 1924. It was the site of the siege of Leningrad during the Second World War, the most lethal siege in history.[14] In June 1991, only a few months before the Belovezha Accords and the dissolution of the USSR, voters supported restoring the city's original appellation in a city-wide referendum.[15]


As Russia's cultural centre,[16] Saint Petersburg received over 15 million tourists in 2018.[17][18] It is considered an important economic, scientific, and tourism centre of Russia and Europe. In modern times, the city has the nickname of being "the Northern Capital of Russia" and is home to notable federal government bodies such as the Constitutional Court of Russia and the Heraldic Council of the President of the Russian Federation. It is also a seat for the National Library of Russia and a planned location for the Supreme Court of Russia, as well as the home to the headquarters of the Russian Navy, and the Western Military District of the Russian Armed Forces. The Historic Centre of Saint Petersburg and Related Groups of Monuments constitute a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Saint Petersburg is home to the Hermitage, one of the largest art museums in the world, the Lakhta Center, the tallest skyscraper in Europe, and was one of the host cities of the 2018 FIFA World Cup and the UEFA Euro 2020.

(Marble Palace)

Antonio Rinaldi

(Old Hermitage, Chesme Church)

Yury Felten

(Academy of Sciences, Hermitage Theatre, Yusupov Palace)

Giacomo Quarenghi

(Mining Institute, Kazan Cathedral)

Andrey Voronikhin

(Admiralty building)

Andreyan Zakharov

(Spit of Vasilievsky Island)

Jean-François Thomas de Thomon

(Saint Isaac's Cathedral, Alexander Column)

Auguste de Montferrand

Births: 50,663 (9.4 per 1,000)

Deaths: 65,137 (12.1 per 1,000)

Cameron gallery in Catherine park of Tsarskoe Selo

Grotto pavilion in Catherine park of Tsarskoe Selo

The Imperial Lyceum in Tsarskoye Selo

Grand Menshikov Palace

UNESCO World Heritage Site

Historic Centre of Saint Petersburg and Related Groups of Monuments

Cultural: (i), (ii), (iv), (vi)

1990 (14th Session)

2013

3,934.1 ha (15.190 sq mi)

Media and communications[edit]

All major Russian newspapers are active in Saint Petersburg. The city has a developed telecommunications system. In 2014, Rostelecom, the national operator, announced the beginning of a major modernization of the fixed-line network in the city.[123]

The State Hermitage Museum is the largest art museum in the world by gallery space.[124]

The State Russian Museum is the world's largest depository of Russian fine art.

The Russian Museum of Ethnography is one of the largest ethnographic museums in the world.[125]

Archived 1 September 2014 at the Wayback Machine

City Tourist Portal

on YouTube by FIFA

St. Petersburg – 2018 FIFA World Cup Host City

on In Our Time at the BBC

St Petersburg

St-Petersburg, Virtual Tour • 360° Aerial Panorama

Atchinson, Bob (2010). . Retrieved 9 February 2011. 50 photographs of St. Petersburg from "Travelogues" of Burton Holmes (Vol. 8, 1914) and other sources

"Saint Petersburg, 1900: a photographic travelogue of the capital of Imperial Russia"

[The Official Portal of the Saint Petersburg City Authority] (in Russian). The Saint Petersburg City Authority: 191060, St. Petersburg, Smolny [Администрация Санкт-Петербурга 191060, СПб., Смольный]. 2001–2011. Archived from the original on 31 December 2006. Retrieved 9 February 2011.

Официальный портал администрации Санкт-Петербурга

. St. Petersburg: The Likhachov Foundation. 2004. Retrieved 9 February 2011. 3500 entries, 9200 personalities, 3500 addresses, 2000 pictures and 40 geographical maps, 3800 bibliographical references from the original "Encyclopaedia of Saint Petersburg" (SPb., Rosspen, 2004)

"Encyclopaedia of Saint Petersburg"

; Bealby, John Thomas (1911). "St Petersburg" . In Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 24 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 38–40.

Kropotkin, Peter Alexeivitch

ISBN 978-5-00071-516-1

Байков В.Д. Ленинградские хроники: от послевоенных 50-х до "лихих 90-х". М. Карамзин, 2017. – 486 с., илл. – in English: Leningrad Chronicles: from the postwar fifties to the "wild nineties"

Archived 16 January 2021 at the Wayback Machine, Historic Cities Archived 25 March 2022 at the Wayback Machine site

Old Maps of Saint Petersburg