St. Petersburg - Church on Spilled Blood
The Hermitage - Winter Palace
The Small, Old, and New Hermitages
SS Peter and Paul Cathedral
St. Isaac's
Peterhof, Part 1
Peterhof, Part 2
Catherine Palace
Pavlovsk, Part 1
Pavlovsk, Part 2
Yusupov Palace
Menshikov Palace
Our Intinerary
Visas
Getting There
Hotels
Getting Around
Restaurants
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St. Petersburg - Our Itinerary |  |
What to do with 7 full days in St. Petersbug? Plenty! (And we didn't even get to everything on our list.) Here is our itinerary:
Day 1: The ADMIRALTY (outside only, we just walked by), the BRONZE HORSEMAN, DECEMBRIST SQUARE. From there we walked to the CHURCH ON SPILLED BLOOD, and the KAZAN CATHEDRAL. We spent time inside both of these.
Day 2: CATHERINE PALACE (Tsarskoe Selo) and PAVLOVSK PALACE. Both well outside the city - we went with a private car and guide (Irina Solovaya, she was excellent) because we were there in early March. In the summer or spring, you could probably find a group tour.
DAY 3: PETERHOF PALACE - ditto the above.
Day 4: The RUSSIAN MUSEUM - Other than a few gorgeous Kandinsky's, we were disappointed in it. We ate lunch in the nearby GRAND HOTEL EUROPE. In the afternoon, we walked to ST ISSAC'S CATHEDRAL, definitely worth going inside. We were staying at the Hotel Astoria, right across the street.
Day 5: We were running late, and it was freezing, so we took a car to ST NICHOLAS CATHEDRAL. The bottom half is worth a visit, but the top half is spectacular. The top half is usually closed except for weddings and Sunday mass, but we were there on a Friday around 11:30 a.m., and it was open (we just walked up the stairs on the side, inside), a mass was in progress, with a choir, it was fantastic.
We walked back past the MARIINSKIY THEATRE (you can only go inside to see a performance (ballet and opera, home of the Kirov), I wish we had done this) and on to the YUSUPOV PALACE where we got tickets for a self-tour. Be sure to buy a separate ticket to the basement exhibit on Rasputin, this is where he was killed!
Day 6: THE HERMITAGE. We focused on the Italian and Spanish Galleries (don't miss DA VINCI's LITTA MADONNA or the Goya's), the Dutch and Flemish (much REMBRANT, although ABRAHAM'S SACRIFICE featured in our guidebook was not there), and the 19th and 20th century European (Matisse, Renoir, Monet, Van Gogh, etc, don't miss).
Also don't miss the fantastic PEACOCK CLOCK - we stumbled across this getting to the Dutch and Flemish galleries.
There are some very helpful computerized map kiosks scattered about, they tell you how to get to what you are looking for! NOTE: the entrance to the Hermitage is off the front square, not in back on the river side as our guidebook said - at least in the winter, when we were there.
DAY 7: The PETER AND PAUL CATHEDRAL, located inside the PETER AND PAUL FORTRESS. This is where St. Petersburg was founded, and the beautiful church has the tombs of all the czars. Including, in a small chapel, the remains of the last czar, Nicholas II, his family and servants. Located on an island, this is difficult to get to out-of-season, but it is a must-see. I assume there are tours in the summer. We, unfortunately, had to take a private car, very expensive but there are no metered taxis, only private cars! And the subway does not go here.
When we left, we had the car take us to the MENSHIKOV PALACE on Vasilevskiy Island, almost directly across the Neva from St. Isaac's Cathedral; you could walk in nice weather. We bought tickets for a self-guided tour; it is an old stone palace, definitely worth a visit if you have the time.
We went to a ballet one evening, Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet at the Mussorgsky Theatre. Expensive (we got tickets through the hotel, great seats), but marvelous, one of the highlights of the trip!
Some of the things on our list that we didn't get to: the MARBLE PALACE (in town, built by Catherine the Great for one of her lovers, now a branch of the Russian Museum), the SUMMER PALACE (in town, built for Peter the Great, the oldest stone building in the city, closed in winter), ORANIENBAUM PALACE (near Peterof, the only country palace to escape destruction by the Nazis, closed in winter), the ALEXANDER PALACE (near Catherine Palace, the residence of Russia's last tsar, Nicholas II),
the SHEREMETEV PALACE (out of town, now home to the Museum of Musical Life), the ALEXANDER NEVSKY MONASTERY (out of town, its cemetery has the graves of Dostoevsky and Tchaikovsky), and the STIEGLITZ MUSEUM (out of town). Even if all of these had been open, we just didn't have time to squeeze anything else in.