Three hours in which St Petersburg comes together as a whole: the ceremonial squares, the Neva embankments, the islands, and the place the city began. It is the best option for a first day here — afterwards you know what is where and where you want to come back to in more depth.
The route is driven, with stops for photographs and short walks. A single trip covers what would take a full day on foot, without leaving you exhausted halfway through. This tour does not go inside the museums and cathedrals — if you would like to, we have versions with St Isaac’s Cathedral and with the Church on Spilled Blood.
Palace Square — Rastrelli’s Winter Palace, the curve of the General Staff building with its triumphal arch, and the Alexander Column: a granite monolith as tall as a sixteen-storey building, standing without a single fixing, by its own weight alone. We will also settle whether cows were really once grazed on the empire’s principal square.
Senate Square and the Bronze Horseman — the site of the Decembrist revolt of 1825 and the monument that gave Pushkin’s poem its name. We will estimate the weight of the Thunder Stone and work out how such a block was ever dragged to the Neva without a single machine.
The Summer Garden — the city’s first garden, where Pushkin, by his own admission, went walking in his dressing gown and slippers: he lived nearby and treated the garden as his own back yard.
The Field of Mars — a square where fireworks were let off, elephants exercised, pancakes eaten at Shrovetide, parades held and heroes buried. The country’s first Eternal Flame burns here.
Trinity Square — the very spot the city began: the first square, the first port, the first trading rows. This is also where you will learn who the “sniffers” were and what they did.
The Mikhailovsky (Engineers’) Castle — the fortress Paul I built in order to feel safe, and where he was murdered forty days after moving in. A place where his ghost is still supposed to be met.
The Spit of Vasilyevsky Island — the Rostral Columns, the old Stock Exchange and the classic panorama across both arms of the Neva. We will also establish who the Vasily was who gave a whole island its name.
The sphinxes on the University Embankment — the oldest monuments on the banks of the Neva: fourteenth century BC, the pharaoh Amenhotep III, 23 tonnes apiece. We will find out for ourselves what happens if you look a sphinx in the eye.
The Church on Spilled Blood, Kazan Cathedral and St Isaac’s — the city’s three great churches from outside, each in its own idiom: Russian, Roman and imperial.
Nevsky Prospect and the embankments — Gostiny Dvor, the Anichkov Bridge with Klodt’s horses, Trinity Bridge, and views of the Peter and Paul Fortress and the cruiser Aurora.
A city tour without commentary is a list of buildings passing the window. A guide ties the points into one story: how a marsh became a capital, why the streets fell as they did, what the Winter Palace has in common with a fashionable beauty, and where an invisible palace is hidden in the city. Why wishes are made at some monuments and not others, and where a great-great-grandson forever chases a great-great-grandfather and never catches him.
The tour is private: your party only, with your own guide and driver. The pace and the emphasis adjust to you — you can linger where it is interesting and drive past what does not appeal.
By arrangement
| People | Price per person |
|---|---|
| 1 | $178 |
| 2 | $98 |
| 3 | $71 |
| 4 | $58 |
| 5 | $50 |
| 6 | $44 |
| 7 | $41 |
| 8 | $38 |
| People | Price per person |
|---|---|
| 9 | $36 |
| 10 | $34 |
| 11 | $32 |
| 12 | $31 |
| 13 | $30 |
| 14 | $29 |
| 15–16 | $28 |
| People | Free places | Price per person |
|---|---|---|
| 10–14 | +1 | $29 |
| 15–24 | +2 | $25 |
| 25–34 | +2 | $21 |
| 35–40 | +3 | $19 |
Group rates apply from 10 people.
Peterhof by hydrofoil: forty minutes across the Gulf of Finland on a foil-borne vessel, and a walk through the Lower Park with the Grand Cascade and Samson.
A city tour of St Petersburg by car with a visit to the Peter and Paul Fortress: Nevsky Prospect, Palace Square, the Spit of Vasilyevsky Island, the cruiser Aurora — and the island where the city began.
The Russian Museum with a guide: from twelfth-century icons to The Ninth Wave, The Last Day of Pompeii and Repin — a thousand years of Russian art in one walk through the Mikhailovsky Palace.
The Konstantinovsky Palace at Strelna: the "Russian Versailles" Peter I intended, canals running down to the Gulf of Finland, the halls of the G8 and G20 summits, and three Konstantins, each with a story of his own.
