Saint Petersburg

Saint Petersburg
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From top to bottom, left to right: the dock of the English and St. Isaac's Cathedral , the Fortress of Peter and Paul , the Palace Square with the Alexander Column , the Winter Palace , Peterhof , the prospect Nevsky night.
Coordinates: 59 56'N 30 16'E / 59 933, 30 267 59 56'N 30 16'E / 59,933, 30,267 Geolocation on the map: Europe Geolocation on the map Russia
Country	Russia
Economic Region	Northwest
Federal District	Northwest
Federal subject	Saint Petersburg
Code OKATO	40
Governor	Valentina Matvienko
Foundation	1703
Status	City since 1703 Capital ( 1 713 - 1918 )
Elder (s) name (s)	Petrograd (1914-1924) Leningrad (1924-1991)
Population	4,600,310 inhab. (2010)
Density	3197 inhabitants / km 2
Demonym	St. St. Petersburg
Altitude	3 m
Area	1 439 km 2
Watercourse	Neva
Time Zone	UTC +3 ( DST : GMT +4)
Calling code	+7 812
Official site	www.gov.spb.ru
List of cities in Russia
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Saint Petersburg ( Russian : -, IPA : / sankt p t rburk / ^{pronunciation} ) is the largest city of Russia by area (1439 km ²⁾ and the second most populous city (with more 4.5 million inhabitants in 2007) after the capital Moscow. It is located northwest of the country on the delta of the Neva , at the bottom of the Gulf of Finland in the Baltic Sea. Capital of the Russian Empire from 1712 until March 1918 (and the Russian Provisional Government headed by two between March and October 1918), St. Petersburg has preserved this time a unique architecture makes it one of the most beautiful cities of Europe. Second Russian port on the Baltic Sea after Primorsk is a major center of industry, research and teaching Russian as a major European cultural center. St. Petersburg is the second largest city by area in Europe and fifth in population.

St. Petersburg was founded in 1703 by Tsar Peter the Great in a disputed region has long been a kingdom of Sweden. By its modern urbanism and aesthetics of foreign origin, the new city would allow Russia to "open a window on Europe" and contribute, according to the wishes of Pierre, to lift Russia to the rank of major powers Europe. The center, built on guidelines of Russian rulers, has a unique architecture that blends the architectural styles ( Baroque , Neoclassical ) acclimated in an original way by architects often of Italian origin. Her beauty combined with the existence of many channels have earned him the nickname "Venice of the North". The city is on the World Heritage List of UNESCO since 1990 , but the inscription of the historic center is in question (2010), because of the Okhta Centre Gas Gazprom , which plans to install the seat its oil subsidiary, on the edge of the old city. This business area of sixty-six hectares, wearing a skyscraper four hundred meters high flame-shaped, should be built at the confluence of the Neva River and Okhta , opposite the Smolny Cathedral, masterpiece of baroque.

From its founding until the early ^twentieth century, Saint Petersburg has been the major center of intellectual, scientific and political development. In the nineteenth ^century, the city became the main commercial and military port of Russia and the country's second largest industrial center after Moscow. It was also at St. Petersburg outbreak of the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the Bolshevik triumph. The city is thereafter a decline. In the early 1920s , following the transfer of the capital to Moscow and the Civil War, the number of the population collapses, it will find its level before 1914 on the eve of the Second World War. The siege of nearly three years during this conflict again decimating its population. Dropped to less than one million inhabitants out of the war, the city is repopulated with the arrival of nationals of other regions. Since that time, St. Petersburg has steadily lost ground to Moscow, a phenomenon that has increased since the liberalization of Russia's economic system.

St. Petersburg has changed name several times: it was renamed Petrograd () from 1914 to 1924 , and then Leningrad () from 1924 to 1991 , before returning to its original name following a referendum in 1991. St. Petersburg is also colloquially called "Piter () by its inhabitants. For Russians, it is the "northern capital" ( , Severnaya stolitsa).

St. Petersburg, the Neva and Lake Ladoga

Pont de la Trinit sur la Nva

St. Petersburg is built on the delta swamps of the Neva at the bottom of the Gulf of Finland in the Baltic Sea. The city has an area of 606 km ² (1,431 km ² including the towns annexed by the city in 1999 in Peterhof and Pushkin ), 10% of water bodies. There are 42 islands. Originally, there were more channels but many were filled. The city is built 2-4 meters above sea level The water table is very close to the surface. The river banks have been consolidated using granite stones that will not only protect the city water but also contribute to give its stamp. Alexander Pushkin wrote, speaking of St. Petersburg: Neva The dressed granite.

Because of its low elevation above sea level, St. Petersburg is often the victim of flooding. In 2003 , official statistics deducting 295 floods since its inception, including 44 since 1980. The most severe floods occurred in 1824 (she would have done, according to statistics, 200 to 500 victims) and in 1924.

The Neva, which flows through St. Petersburg, a river is very short (74km) but his speed (2510 m ³ / s) is one of the most powerful of Europe : indeed the Neva collection, through several lakes the waters of a catchment of 218 000 km ^{2 (2}/ ₅ the size of France ). In St. Petersburg, the Neva is off 600 meters and the velocity is high. Of the 74 km of its course, 28 are located within the city limits.

Until the nineteenth ^century, the shallow waters of the Gulf of Finland came naturally to recycle the effluent from the city. Besides, nowadays, wastewater of the 5 million residents and many industries still account for only 2% of the water discharged by the Neva. But the mid-nineteenth ^century, the first outbreak of cholera and typhus broke out because of poor water quality. In 1908 , an outbreak of typhus caused 9000 casualties. The problem was solved in 1910 by a change in location of water catchments in the city. In the 1950 and 1960 , the rapid increase in population gave the topic on the agenda. Aggravating the waters of the Neva was so heavily polluted before entering the city from Lake Ladoga, they were both degraded by the many plants on the periphery of the lake and the water quality of rivers feeding Lake. A reprocessing plant was built at the time but, nowadays, 25 to 30% of wastewater is still not retired. The Gulf of Finland is home to mostly freshwater species and some species of brackish water. The ecosystem that shelters is highly threatened by human activities.

Sleepless night on the Place de l'insurrection () June 28, 2006 at 23 hours (59.6 N)

To protect St. Petersburg from floods, the Soviet government in 1978 launched the construction of the dam of St. Petersburg along 25 km: this bar across the Gulf to 20 km offshore from St. Petersburg at the height of Island Kotlin which is built on Kronstadt. These floods are not related to periods of high water of the Neva, but the pressure exerted by the westerly winds on the Gulf that prevent river water from flowing into the Gulf and, in cases extreme them back upstream. For environmental reasons, the dam was stopped in the late 1980s while the northern half was already done: it was realized that the dam significantly disrupted the flow of coastal waters and was strongly lowered their quality making them partially stagnant. It was feared at the time that all the Gulf becomes a swamp. Construction resumed in 1990 with technical assistance from Dutch, recognized experts in the field and financial support from the European Investment Bank. Insofar as the environmental threats still exist, the dam remains a very controversial topic among residents of St. Petersburg.

St. Petersburg is at the same latitude as the cities of Oslo and Stockholm and the southern Alaska or the southern tip of Greenland. It has a continental climate characterized by wet high temperature contrasts between winter and summer. The summers are relatively warm with an average temperature between 19 and 22 C, while in winter the average temperature is between -4 and -8 C. The snow is present 123 days a year. Rainfall (625 mm per year) are particularly important during the summer. Because of its very northern latitude, the nights that frame the summer solstice are never completely dark (" White Nights "). The temperature record in St. Petersburg is 37.1 C August 7, 2010.

History

Origin of name of St. Petersburg

The beginnings of the city plan of 1705

St. Petersburg does not derive its name from its founder, Tsar Peter the Great , but the apostle Peter. However, the city received fourteen different designations of origin: the most frequent Sankt-Piter Piter-Bourkhis Bourkhis or derivative of Dutch Sint Pietersburg, but Petropolis, Petropolis even ^{Open a window on Europe}

Peter and Paul Fortress, the first building

Map of the city in 1776 during the reign of Catherine II

The Nevsky prospect drilled during the reign of Anne (photochromic 1890)

The foundation in St. Petersburg a new capital is part of a series of reforms undertaken by Tsar Peter the Great to make Russia a modern country and a European power. When Peter the Great came to power, Russia is a country with no university, no scientist or engineer, under the section of a church and a particularly conservative landed gentry. Devoid of marine and defended by an army without professional staff or modern weapons, Russia can not win against its powerful neighbors Sweden and the Ottoman Empire. Apart from its churches and the Kremlin (built by Italian architects), Moscow is a city of wooden houses. The creation of St. Petersburg will allow Peter to have a real open-water port which will create a navy and to trade easily with other European countries. His creation must also enable it to have a modern capital, similar to European cities that he discovered during the Great Embassy. It is for Russia led by a visionary czar to "open a window on Europe" source of progress and modernity, in the words attributed to the Italian traveler and writer Francesco Algarotti (1736).

Foundation

The circumstances of the siting of St. Petersburg are the subject of a myth which attributes to Peter the Great a central role. According to this legend, the Tsar visionary would have chosen the first glance to locate its future capital in a region of swamps devoid of inhabitants at the mouth of the Neva. The most famous illustration of the "capital out of nothing" by the creative will of a sovereign is inspired in the poem The Bronze Horseman of Alexander Pushkin (1834).

In reality, the region bordering the lower reaches of the Neva, the Ingria , was already inhabited by Finno-Ugric peoples living since ^the tenth century, mainly the work of the earth. At the beginning of the fourteenth ^century,Sweden and the Republic of Novgorod fought control of this region. A Swedish colony, probably located on the site of the city, was destroyed in 1301. Finally, the two powers came to an agreement to make the region a buffer zone where no fortification could be built. Over the following centuries, the region served as the landing place for ships using the Neva and perhaps also a trading center. The latter role is attested from 1611, when the Swedes took advantage of their supremacy at the time about the area, built the fortress of Nyenschantz and a little later the colony Nyen nearby. Both were on the present site of St. Petersburg on the north shore (that is to say, right) of the Neva. There is also evidence that Sweden was considering, in ^seventeenth century, the construction of a city of larger size. But the Swedes suffered a setback during the bitter War Russo-Swedish ( 1656 ) and the town and fortress were destroyed by Russian troops.

The construction of the first building is located by the Russians in 1703 / A> after the final conquest of Nyenschantz by Russian troops under the command of Sheremetev during the Great Northern War. Nyenschantz had been preventively evacuated and partially destroyed by the Swedes. The official date of the founding of the city is the 16 May 1703 (27 May in the Gregorian calendar ) that day, on the Isle of Hares (Island Jnisaari in Finnish ), the first stone of the fortress of Peter and Paul , patron saints of the name of the Tsar, is laid ^{The development}

Mariinsky Palace in 1849

St. Isaac's Square in the late ^nineteenth century

Peter the Great brought upon the creation of the city of craftsmen and engineers from across Europe, particularly the Netherlands, to make the city a major center of technology and science.

After the death of Peter the Great in 1725 , the enthusiasm of Russian rulers for the "Window on the West" falls. In 1728 , according to the order of Emperor Peter II , Moscow again became the capital, but in 1730 he died and with the arrival in power of Anne St. Petersburg finds priority. It again became the capital of Russia. Work by Anne left a deep imprint in the St. Petersburg today: it builds the downtown district of Petrograd on the bank of the Neva side Admiralty chart and is the major avenues: prospects Nevsky and Voznesensky, the Gorokhovaya Ulitsa. Yet she prefers Moscow where he resides most frequently.

The czarinas Elizabeth (1741-1761) and especially Catherine II reinforce the policy of openness to Western Europe and have come to St. Petersburg artists and architects. The most prestigious buildings, which have shaped the image of the city were built during the reign of Elizabeth: it is well build the Winter Palace and the Smolny monastery. She rebuilt the palace of Catherine (mother) by using the original Italian Baroque architect Bartolomeo Rastrelli, who directed several major buildings in the city. Catherine II is probably the person who, after Peter the Great, played the most decisive in the fate of St. Petersburg. This is a representative of the Enlightenment, at least until the French Revolution, and it is strongly advance the culture and art. Catherine II created 25 educational institutions and the Smolny Institute the first public school for Russian girls. The equestrian statue of Peter the Great , the city landmark, also dates from his reign.

Gatchina Palace, late ^nineteenth century

In the late eighteenth ^century and during the first half of the ^nineteenth century, the city has a flourish, primarily cultural, and scientific and technical. The first school of Russian ballet was created in 1738. In 1757 , it was the turn of the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts which are still trained painters, sculptors and architects. Theaters and museums, universities and libraries are created: in 1783 , opened the Mariinsky Theatre , which will be played in the first great Russian operas of Glinka. In 1819 , the State University of Saint Petersburg was opened.

The abolition of serfdom in Russia by Alexander II in 1861 is coming into the town a large number of peasants who can not feed on land allocated to them. The population is increasing very rapidly in recent years. Writers and intellectuals gather in literary circles and publish dictionaries and journals. Among the major journals include the North Star of Ryleev and Bestouchev and Sovremmennik of Pushkin.

The complex of the Hermitage Museum: From left to right: Hermitage Theatre - Old Chapel - Little Hermitage - Winter Palace (the New Hermitage is not visible behind the Old Hermitage).

Uprisings, revolutions and attacks

On 22 January 1905, the army shot the crowd assembled before the Winter Palace. Called Bloody Sunday, the event launched the 1905 revolution

The major revolts and revolutions of the modern period of Russian history since the revolt of the Decembrists in 1825 until the events that led to the creation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , held in Saint Petersburg. In the late nineteenth ^century, unrest and small uprisings are a frequent phenomenon in the city.

St. Petersburg in 1901

This is the scene of many attacks against representatives of the court of the Tsar and the Russian administration, the most famous being the assassination of Alexander II. Port and major industrial city, its working population is large and sensitive to socialist ideas from the late ^nineteenth century.

Revolutionary parties and associations are created in Saint Petersburg and violently suppressed by police. The revolution of 1905 fires in St. Petersburg during the episode of Red Sunday. Following this revolution, the second Duma of Russian history is convened in the city. The revolution of February 1917 also takes place mostly in St. Petersburg. The starting signal of the October Revolution , the same year is a gun fired by the cruiser Aurora docked in the port of Petrograd. Lenin transferred the capital to Moscow shortly thereafter. In 1921 , the nearby port of Kronstadt is the center of an uprising of sailors against the dictatorship of the Bolsheviks , which is repressed in blood by Leon Trotsky (1921).

Leningrad

Lenin and Trotsky in Petrograd in 1921 among the soldiers of the Red Army

The city's population had reached more than 2 million people before the revolution is divided by three: the emigration of the nobility for much of the intelligentsia and upper classes release hundreds of thousands apartments in the heart of the city that are rapidly transformed into communal apartments for working families came from the periphery. Famine due to civil war (1917-1923) hunting residents. The loss of the status of capital involves the transfer of many jobs to Moscow.

After Lenin's death (1924), the ancient city of the tsars was renamed Leningrad. The center of Soviet power moves to Moscow. Stalin dismisses the leaders of the Communist Party in Leningrad, which still exert influence on the direction of the Soviet state: in 1934 , the party leader of Leningrad, Sergei Kirov , was assassinated in his office (Stalin was suspected of being behind the murder). The murder serves as a pretext to trigger the Great Purges , which will decimate the history of the party elite and the Soviet population and to allow Stalin to consolidate his dictatorship: the former president of the Soviet Leningrad Grigory Zinoviev , along with Lev Kamenev , one of the best known victims.

The conflict between Moscow and Leningrad is also evident at this time through the development strategy of the city. The new urban plan Leningrad plans to move the center of the city around the new Moscow Square and Avenue of Moscow (Moscow Prospekt), south of the historic districts. The shape and the names chosen are meant to deny the historical role of the city and bring it within the ranks of Soviet cities. The city inherited the old system is abandoned, the religious monuments are closed or converted, and many names are changed (the Nevsky Prospect Avenue becomes October 25).

The campaign of collectivization of land (1929-1933) leads the arrival of hundreds of thousands of peasants who are hired in local factories. Population rises to almost 3 million people on the eve of the Second World War.

The Siege of Leningrad

Savitcheva Tania, 11, died of starvation during the siege, noted the deaths of family members. His last note "all dead, I'm all alone"

Displays the time of war. The slogan "Defend the city of Lenin"

During the Second World War , taking part Leningrad strategic objectives assigned by Hitler to the German armies. The advance of troops on Russian territory allows them to almost completely encircle Leningrad from 8 September 1941 with the help of Finnish troops, who returned to their former border in Karelia. Germans refuse to take by storm the city, well defended by lines of trenches and anti-tank obstacles prepared from June 1941 and by troops under the command of Zhukov. The Germans decide to put the seat all by cutting the supply lines of food and ammunition, hoping to starve the three million inhabitants and defenders. The siege lasted 900 days but the city resistant to its release by Russian troops in 1944. The losses are huge: 500,000 military casualties, but above 1.2 million civilians (mostly starved to death). During the siege, 150,000 artillery shells and aerial bombs 100 000 falling on the city. The targets are large corporations but also the main monuments of the city, schools, depots streetcar and residential neighborhoods in an attempt to demoralize the population. The only link with the outside is ensured by air (but the Germans have control over the air) and the south of Lake Ladoga with the Soviets retain control. On the latter, during winter 1941 , a route is traced (in Russian : the road of life ) and a railway track is laid but part of the course is under fire from German artillery: on 3 trucks trying to break the blockade, one reaches an average of Leningrad. More than a million people were evacuated by the way, for most children. The first year was terrible famine claimed nearly 500 000 victims. The city authorities are ill prepared to evacuate and head as supplies are disrupted. The air strikes destroy part of the stock of food. From October 1941 , rations fell to 400 grams of bread per worker, 200 grams for children and women. This ration was again reduced to 200 grams respectively in November and 125 grams. The winter is particularly cold, with temperatures of -40 C and settlers lack of fuel for heating. In January 1942 , famine was at its height. People fall and die in the street without anyone intervening. The dead are buried. The number of civilian casualties rises in January 1942 with nearly 100,000 deaths. The blockade was total until Operation Iskra loosen the noose in January 1943 : Soviet troops and those of the Leningrad front Volchov succeed after fierce fighting to open a corridor south of Lake Ladoga through which can pass supplies from 18 January. In January 1944 , a Soviet offensive on the southern front lifts the blockade. During the summer of 1944 the Finnish troops are in turn rejected.

Postwar

Leningrad is found after the Second World War in a paradoxical situation. On the one hand, the city became the symbol of resistance to Soviet invaders and suffering endured by the country, on the other hand, this period is marked until the 1950s and beyond by the power struggles between Officials in Moscow and Leningrad. Rebuilding the city is a matter of prestige for the Soviet Union. Also in very short time, a million workers begin to rebuild the city with the desire to restore the most prestigious buildings. In 1945 , Leningrad was awarded the title "Hero City".

After the war, new neighborhoods were built: the volume of homes built peaked in 1963. Cons by the 250 ^th anniversary of the city in 1953 was rejected because at that time, the power struggle with Moscow is still ongoing and a celebration of this type could have been misinterpreted. Moreover, the recent death of Stalin finds it difficult for a party. The celebration finally took place in 1957 under Nikita Khrushchev not to mention that it is actually the ^254th anniversary.

Over the following years, the city retains its role as a major industrial city and major scientific center of the Soviet Union. But it is clear then that the political and cultural center is now in Moscow. The population had been marked by events of the war and much of its inhabitants had settled after the war as their commitment to Leningrad was becoming weaker.

In 1988 , a fire destroyed the Academy of Sciences almost a million books stored in the library. In 1989 , the downtown area is declared protected.

The St. Petersburg today

Nevsky Prospekt Day

Kazansky Cathedral

Nevsky Prospekt at night

On 12 June 1991 , the townspeople voted by referendum for the city to regain its original name which will be effective from 6 September 1991. However the region has kept its Soviet name (the Leningrad Oblast ).

During the attempted coup against President Boris Yeltsin in October 1993 , the mayor of Saint Petersburg Anatoly Sobchak brings together supporters of democracy to demonstrate outside the Winter Palace against the coup plotters.

In 1991 , the area of the city of St. Petersburg increased significantly by integrating the satellite towns of Kolpino , Krasnoe Selo , Pushkin , Lomonosov , Pavlovsk , Kronstadt , Peterhof , Sestroretsk and Zelenogorsk. These cities are now considered areas of St. Petersburg and are no longer part of the territory of Leningrad Oblast.

On 27 May 2003 , celebrations of the ^300th anniversary of the founding of the city are celebrated. On this occasion, parts of the old town and several palaces are restored. The town gathers for the first time in years at the center of world attention. As the renovations were mainly concerned the facades and some impressive buildings, critics stressed that this was a restaurant like the Potemkin villages. However, those criticisms stopped later as work continued after the jubilee and continues today thanks in part to private investors.

Politics

City Hall in St. Petersburg

St. Petersburg is the capital of the Leningrad Oblast and the Federal District of the Northwest. In addition, the city forms, like Moscow, an administrative region (one subject ) in its own right. The chief executive is a governor elected for four years by universal suffrage. The legislature, the Duma of the town, is composed of 40 members who are elected for 4 years. On the protocol, the head of the Duma is located in the same rank as the governor.

In 1996 , Vladimir Yakovlev was replaced Anatoly Sobchak. He presented himself as a pragmatist with no ideological attachment. Sobchak was instead a strict reformer of the post communist, who had accumulated a lot of grudges against him because of his radical liberal positions. He has repeatedly refused to dismiss Vladimir Putin accused of corruption, when it was part of the municipal team. Putin organization unsuccessfully Sobchak's election campaign in 1996.

Yakovlev did not stand in the elections of October 2003. The current Governor Valentina Matvienko. This was the favorite of Putin and the Russian government. During the election campaign, the government intervened in favor of direct and indirect using the full power of the state apparatus. On the one hand, Matvienko was the only one to have regular access to the media, particularly television, on the other hand, the other candidates and their supporters were regularly embarrassed and harassed by the police.

The Committee of Soldiers' Mothers of St. Petersburg was known for his fight against the war in Chechnya and against violence in the armed forces. In July 2006 , the annual summit of G8 was held in the city, while Russia holds the rotating presidency.

The city and its monuments

Sample architecture of St. Petersburg: Palace Stroganoff

Map of downtown and major monuments

Saint Petersburg was for long the seat of power of Russian tsars. They have deployed the pomp that allowed them their immense wealth that we see today many stories in the city. The majestic appearance of St. Petersburg comes from combining a variety of architectural features: long straight boulevards, majestic spaces, parks and gardens, forged metal railings, monuments and decorative sculptures. The Neva and the many canals and their granite clad piers and bridges help to give the city a unique appearance that strikes the visitor. As part of the tercentenary of the founding of St. Petersburg (2004), many buildings have been restored. The city now has 250 museums alongside nearly 4,000 protected monuments. 15% of the construction of St. Petersburg - a total of 2,400 buildings - are under UNESCO protection as a witness to the history of world architecture. In this area, St. Petersburg is second only to Venice. But the city has difficulty in meeting costs of maintaining historic buildings. Besides the numbers, we must restore the depth of many buildings were heavily damaged during the Soviet period and combat the deterioration of facades caused by industrial pollution and heavy traffic of downtown.

Canals and bridges

Zimn Canal in downtown

Canal Griboyedov

St. Petersburg originally extended over a hundred islands created by the arms of the Neva River, its tributaries and artificial channels. The main island Petrogradski are on the right bank, occupied by working-class neighborhoods and which backs the Peter and Paul Fortress and Vasilevsky Island, the largest island which faces the gulf and where is the main university building. North of these two islands, the Isle of the Cross hosted the Kirov stadium that is now being replaced by a new stadium while the island Yelagin is a great amusement park. The channels that formed in a checkerboard Vasilevsky Island in imitation of Amsterdam have been met. The most popular channels are located on the left bank. These three concentric canals: the Fontanka widest outside, canals and Moika Griboedov more sinuous. To move from one island to another, there are now 342 bridges in size and architectural style varied ( Egyptian Bridge Bridge bank with its griffins, bridge of lions, ...). Each night when the Neva is navigable (April to November), decks of 22 bridges on the Neva and main canals are raised to let ships pass in and out of the Baltic Sea.

Major buildings

Former Singer building, now the House of Books, the largest bookstore in the city

Beloselski-Belozersky Palace

Nevsky Prospekt

Gatchina

• The Peter and Paul Fortress occupies a dominant position on the right bank of the Neva opposite the Winter Palace in the center of the city. On the other bank of the Neva, the tip (Strelka) Vasilyevsky Island is occupied by the building of the former stock exchange (1805-1810)-style Greek revival "which now houses the Naval Museum Russian. A park occupies the tip of the island where there are two large columns decorated with colored prows of warships and statues. This place is often used for cultural events including the White Nights Festival.

• The Admiralty
• Passage , a shopping arcade
• The Mariinsky Theatre (formerly the Kirov)
• The Finland Station , where Lenin arrived from the immigration 3 April 1917 to lead the October Revolution.
• Kresty Prison: the building Kresty (crosshair) is the largest prison in Europe. The administration wants to sell it for conversion into flats (as Boutyrskaa in Moscow ).
• The Nevsky Prospect is 4.5 km long main avenue of St. Petersburg: she runs the Winter Palace Monastery a href = "Alexandre_Nevsky" alt = "Alexander Nevsky" class = "mw-redirect"> Alexander Nevsky. It's the busiest shopping street of the city and the center of the cultural and night life. There are shopping malls, department stores ( Gostiny Dvor ) varied in architectural style (the old store Ielisseev, the old Singer building or House of Books, both in style Art Nouveau ) and several churches and palaces (including Stroganov Palace of Rastrelli in baroque style).

• The Bronze Horseman , monumental equestrian statue of Peter ^I, commissioned by Catherine II of Russia in the French sculptor Falconet , is a symbol of the city that inspired a famous poem by Pushkin.

Imperial residences around St. Petersburg

• Peterhof
• Tsarskoe Selo (now Pushkin), where the famous Catherine Palace is one of the cities linked recently in Saint Petersburg
• Constantine Palace
• Pavlovsk
• Oranienbaum
• Gatchina

Religious buildings

Cathedrale Saint-Sauveur

The Cathedral of St. Isaac

St. Catherine Catholic Church on Nevsky Prospekt

Vladimir Palace

The Buddhist temple in St. Petersburg

The city has many religious buildings in the historic center are baroque or neoclassical (except the cathedral of Saint-Sauveur) and lack of bulbs so characteristic of traditional Russian buildings.

• The Cathedral of Peter and Paul (1712-1732) located in the fortress eponymous initial core of the city, is the first stone cathedral of Saint Petersburg. Its spire, which rises to 132 meters at the end of which stands an angel holding a cross is a symbol of the city. The majority of the Tsars Russian successor to Peter the Great are buried.
• The Cathedral of St. Isaac (1748-1764), the work of architects Auguste de Montferrand and Vasily Stassov dominates the city. It is by its size, the third church baroque in Europe after St. Peter's Basilica in Rome or more accurately the Vatican and St. Paul's Cathedral in London. High of 101.5 meters, it is visible to tens of kilometers across the flat delta of the River Neva.
• The Cathedral of Our Lady of Kazan (1801-1811) Andr Voronikhin, inspired by St. Peter's Basilica, is located on Nevsky Prospekt and is dedicated to the victory over Napoleon's armies.
• The cathedral of Saint-Sauveur (1883 - 1907) is the only building constructed according to the traditional Russian architectural style. It was built on the site of the assassination of Alexander II.
• The church Saint-Nicolas-Mariners (1753-1762) is a fine example of Baroque art imported from Europe by Tsar Peter ^I. It contains ten icons of gold offered by Catherine II to commemorate the 10 most beautiful Russian naval victories.
• The Smolny Convent colored blue and white is a baroque masterpiece by the Italian architect Bartolomeo Rastrelli , who remained unfinished. St. Petersburg has other remarkable buildings such as the Baroque church of St. Simeon and Anna (1731-1740), Church of St. Sampson (1728-1740) and the Cathedral Saint-Andr (1764-1780).
• There are many neoclassical churches, which often dominate vast spaces such as the Cathedral of St. Vladimir (1769 - 1789), Church of Our Lady of Vladimir (1761 - 1783), the Cathedral of the Transfiguration (1827 - 1829) and the Trinity Cathedral (1828 - 1835, damaged by fire in 2006) the last two of the architect Vladimir Stasov.
• The Alexander Nevsky Monastery was built to house the remains of the Russian hero Alexander Nevsky. It includes two cathedrals and five smaller churches in various styles. Today is one of three main centers of religious education in Russia and that is where the patriarch of St. Petersburg. Found near the cemetery Tikhvin which houses the tombs of the most famous artists of the city ( Cesar Cui , Dostoyevsky , Mikhail Glinka , Mussorgsky , Rimsky-Korsakov , Tchaikovsky ).
• There are in addition to the St. Catherine church in baroque style, on Nevsky Prospekt, another church Catholic , built for the French in the early twentieth ^century,the Church of Our Lady of Lourdes.
• The Buddhist temple in St. Petersburg is a building built in the 1910s in the style of Tibetan Buddhist monasteries.
• We also note several churches on the Nevsky Prospekt, as the Armenian church Ste-Catherine (in neoclassical style ), or the German Lutheran church (in Romanesque Revival style ).

Parks and Palace

Consulate General of France in Saint-Petersburg

• The Consulate General of France

It is located at 15 Quai de la Moika since 1972 in a neoclassical building redesigned by architect AC Kolb in 1858 at the request of its new owner, General Staff Seyffarth. It is there that Honore de Balzac had stayed in 1843. The building has been home to other artists: the poet Piotr Viazemski in the 1860s , and in the 1890's , the painter Arkady Alexandrovich Rylov, who was later a leading figure of Soviet symbolism.

• The Summer Garden ( 59 56 '46 "N 30 20' 06" E / 59946, 30335 )

This is a public garden " in the French "in the heart of the city of Saint Petersburg in Russia. First garden of St. Petersburg, it is performed between the years 1704 and 1719 on a plan outlined by Tsar Peter the Great. The park is located on the Neva River which runs along the north. It is also surrounded by the Swan Canal in the west, the Fontanka east and Moika south.

Alley Summer Garden

The garden gate a beautiful wrought iron work which is a symbol of St. Petersburg

The park was designed by Leblon, and Semzov Matveev. At the time, the French gardens are fashionable: it is organized in a rectangular planted trees (initially shrubs and beds of flowers) separated by walkways. Sculptures, that Peter had made back in Italy, represent characters from Greek and Roman mythology. Balls and fireworks were held. Peter the Great had built there between 1710 and 1714 the Summer Palace ( ), a modest building in which he had just relax. In 1763, the banks of the Neva are arranged and covered with granite: the Palace Embankment along the garden which is then closed between 1777 and 1784 by a grid, a masterpiece of wrought iron that has become a symbol of the city.

• The Summer Palace

Saint Petersburg, the cultural capital

St. Petersburg is a cultural center foreground. Tourist destination visited annually by some three million foreign tourists in St. Petersburg features more than 70 museums, such as the Hermitage or the Russian Museum.

The Hermitage Museum

The Winter Palace which houses part of the museum

The Russian Museum

The State Hermitage Museum, which describes 60,000 rooms in nearly 1,000 theaters is one of the largest museums in the world. It occupies a series of six monumental buildings along the Neva to the ^eighteenth and ^nineteenth century. In 1764 , Catherine II of Russia begins to form a private collection of paintings by buying thousands of tables across Europe. To store these tables, it built a small hermitage and the old Hermitage. The following czars pursued the policy of expanding the collection by diversifying from the early nineteenth ^century. In 1852 , part of the collection becomes available to the public. The museum contains, besides many pieces of Antiquity, a collection of works of European art from the classical period that is among the finest in the world with those of the Louvre and the Prado Museum. Among the exhibits are paintings by Dutch masters and French as Rembrandt , Rubens , Matisse and Paul Gauguin. There are also two works by Leonardo da Vinci as well as 31 paintings by Pablo Picasso. The buildings housing the Hermitage Museum is one of the leading ensembles of downtown St. Petersburg that is classified as World Heritage of UNESCO.

Literature

Dostoevsky's tomb in St. Petersburg. The first words of the Brothers Karamazov , are engraved

The Naval Museum

National Library

St. Petersburg, the seat of power and intellectual center of Russia for two centuries has attracted the greatest Russian writers and was a major inspiration.

The Bronze Horseman by Alexander Pushkin (1833), who spent part of his life in the city and died there, is the first work that takes world-famous theme of St. Petersburg:

"Yes, I love you, city, creation of Peter
I like the gloomy aspect of your vast river
I love your golden domes where the bird makes its nest,
And thy gates of brass and your granite piers,
But before all this love, O city of hope
It's your white nights sweet Transparency

The poem tells the story of an employee who, having lost his mind after a flood of the Neva, whose victim was his girlfriend, cursed the Tsar who created the city in this location inappropriate. Half mad, he believes that the statue of Peter wakes up and she started to pursue him.

The fantastic atmosphere of St. Petersburg, its unreality, the folly of its inhabitants are topics included in the Petersburg News of Gogol , who spent several unhappy years in Petersburg and wrote in 1835 in the Nevsky Prospekt : "Here everything is a lie Everything is a dream, everything is different from what it seems. "

Dostoyevsky, who lived much of his adult life in the city, used as a backdrop to many of his works: Les Nuits Blanches , Poor Folk , The Double , The Idiot and Crime and Punishment. His stories are also running in the neighborhoods where workers and employees live.

The major writers of the ^twentieth century are Vladimir Nabokov , Andrey Bely (author of the novel Symbolist Petersburg) and Yevgeny Zamyatin and the Serapion Brotherhood (en). Anna Akhmatova has played a major role in Russian poetry and has embodied the strength of intellectual City to Stalin's dictatorship: his poem Requiem is the story of human tragedy during the Stalinist terror. Joseph Brodsky Petersburg is another important author of the ^twentieth century, Nobel Prize for Literature (1987): While living in the U.S. , his writings deal with the English society of St. Petersburg a very particular point of view created by his dual position of native and foreign.

As the time of the czars, Dostoyevsky and Pushkin had been prosecuted and convicted by the power, after the October Revolution, many authors from or living in St. Petersburg were persecuted by the regime, murdered, forced to change jobs or to emigrate.

Theatre and music

the Mariinsky Theatre

Theatre Tovstonogov

The city has more than 40 theaters and music halls. The Mariinsky Theatre is one of opera houses the world famous. It houses the Kirov Ballet. The Alexander Theatre (or Alexandriski) was created by the Czarina Elizabeth I in 1756. The troupe which was the first theater in Russia, was originally incorporated students from the School of Cadets. It was only in 1832 , the theater moved to the prestigious building built by the architect Carlo Rossi.

Many composers have lived and worked in the city: Mikhail Glinka , Modest Mussorgsky , Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov , Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky , Igor Stravinsky and Dmitri Shostakovich. The Symphony ^No. 7 Shostakovich has special significance for the city. Shostakovich began writing it in Leningrad during the siege of 1941 and ends at the Kuibyshev , where he was evacuated. The first performance took place in Kuibyshev in March 1942 , but the symphony was also performed in Leningrad on 9 August 1942 , while the siege continued, despite the risks taken by spectators and musicians. The performance was broadcast live on radio throughout the country. This symphony is at the time the symbol of resistance and of Russian culture.

Ballet

St. Petersburg is one of the most important places for the development of ballet in large part thanks to the dancers and choreographers who have lived and exercised their talent: Serge Diaghilev , Marius Petipa , Vaslav Nijinsky , Kschessinska Mathilde , Anna Pavlova. The city has perhaps the most famous ballet school in the world, the Vaganova ballet school, which was founded in 1738.

Cinema

The emergence of industry film coincides with the end of the period of cultural development in the city. During the Soviet era, virtually no Russian film-class and no foreign production were not shot in the city. Since 1990 , among the films produced in St. Petersburg, there are essentially adaptations of classic Russian literature: a dozen films are transposed from Anna Karenina (the first versions of the silent era are a Russian and a French version dating from 1911 , the first Western production shot on the premises was in 1997 ) and some adaptations of The Idiot , the novel by Dostoyevsky (the first Russian staging in 1910).

Some films tell the story of the city. Apart from a large number of works by Soviet propaganda, there is so far little works: among them are the film You, the Living (Italian, 1942 ) which is an adaptation of the book of Ayn Rand : the story of the October Revolution is intended as a critique of fascism in Italy. The history of the last tsar's daughter, Anastasia , was brought to the screen many times. The most famous versions are those of 1956 with Ingrid Bergman and the musical of Don Bluth ( 1977 , U.S.), former chief designer of Walt Disney. This musical that is as much about the history of the city as its aesthetic opulence, distorts his subject so that it is difficult to recognize St. Petersburg. The only film on St. Petersburg who had an international audience are Russian Ark , which traces the history of the city and which was filmed in one sequence shot in the Hermitage and the film The Fall (which traces the history of the last days of Hitler), part of which was filmed in St. Petersburg because some parts of the historic downtown are great similarities with Berlin. In France, the film Russian Dolls by Cdric Klapisch , filmed in St. Petersburg in 2005 has had some success, as well as in other countries.

The city is rarely part of fictions that are not adaptations of literary works. Fictions use St. Petersburg for the impressive background it provides. The film of James Bond Goldeneye ( 1995 ) shows a nearly post-apocalyptic city. Another action movie Midnight in Saint Petersburg (Columbia, 1996 ) attempts to compensate for its lack of content by beautiful scenes shot in the middle of the main monuments of St. Petersburg. The film Onegin ( 1999 inter alia with Liv Tyler ), whose screenplay inspired by the poem Eugene Onegin by Pushkin, abandons the course of history for the benefit of views over the monuments of St. Petersburg. The Russia House , a thriller espionage with Sean Connery , Michelle Pfeiffer and Klaus Maria Brandauer gives the city a romantic image with shots aestheticizing and symphonic soundtrack.

Music

St. Petersburg Conservatory

In the 1980s , following the disappearance of censorship during the Perestroika, a current rock lively developed in Leningrad. Many rock bands have formed under the auspices of the Leningrad rock club. Artistic movements have been able to flourish freely in the city as opposed to Moscow where freedoms were more controlled. These groups and their interpreters today continue to exert influence on Russian music scene. These include the group Piterski Rock (Rock of St. Petersburg), Boris Grebenchtchikov Aquarium, Kino Victor Zoi, Alissa Kinchtev Constantine, Zoopark with Michail "Mike" or Naoumenko DDT Yuri Schevtchouk (of Ufa ) ^{The White Nights Festival}

In the month of June (for two-three weeks) the sun does not virtually: an international festival is held during the " white nights "that coincide with the end of the school year. Musical and theatrical performances are exceptional, but also organized shows that most popular attended by large numbers of inhabitants: Variety music concert, fireworks, game Naval ...

Sport

Petrovsky Stadium

St. Petersburg hosted part of the football tournament during the Summer Olympics of 1980. The Goodwill Games in 1994 were also held in the city.

The first sporting event was organized in 1703 by Peter the Great , after the victory of the Empire on the Swedish navy. The Equestrian Games have been a long tradition, popular throughout the Tsars and aristocracy, but also for military training.

Petrovsky Stadium is a sports complex including stadium team Zenit St. Petersburg which can accommodate 21,570 spectators.

Population

Downtown near the bridge on Singers Moika

The Hermitage at night

Le Quai des Anglais.

St. Petersburg Day

According to the census of 2 October 2002 , St. Petersburg has 4,159,635 inhabitants, representing about 3% of the total population of Russia. The average income rose in the first half 2007 , according to official data, to 15,100 rubles (420 euros).

Since its founding, the city suffered great social contrasts. Since perestroika and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, they were further strengthened. People who beg or sell their last possessions, are certainly more visible in the city center from the Jubilee 2003 , but part of everyday outlying districts. About 15% of the population continues to live in Kommunalka , these communal apartments, where several family are required to share an apartment with one kitchen and one bathroom and only have one piece of their own. When new neighborhoods were built on the outskirts of Saint Petersburg in 1.95 thousand years - 1980 , nearly half a million families could move into new apartments and approximately 100,000 apartments in the city were purchased by families belonging to the middle class. Although the economic and social activity is concentrated in the historic center, the richest part of town, the majority of the population lives in the suburbs.

The move to St. Petersburg is only allowed if it has a housing and a job or if you marry a resident. The international labor organizations estimate that there were 16,000 street children in 2000. The city was once known for its multi-cultural is now dominated, according to official statistics, by the Russian "ethnic", which represent 89.1% of the population. There are also 2.1% Jews , 1.9% Ukrainians, 1.9% Belarusians and small groups of Tatars, Caucasian, Uzbek, Finnish and Karelian.

Despite the atheism advocated by the Soviet regime, it was estimated in 2004 that only 10% of the population was atheist. The majority of Russian Orthodox faith, and divide between conservative and reformist currents. Religious buildings belong mostly to the Russian state. Peter the Great had forbidden in Saint Petersburg bulbous towers also are there throughout the city only one pre-war monument with its towers of this type: it is the church of the Resurrection built on the site of the assassination of Alexander II. The many religious buildings built in recent years in the suburbs include lathes bulbs. In 1914 , the Crimean Tatar community located on the north bank of the Neva built the mosque in St. Petersburg. Close to the Mariinsky theater is a synagogue built in 2003 in an oriental style. This is the third synagogue in Europe for its size.

Demographics

Nevsky Prospekt.

Graphic History of the population of St. Petersburg

During the twentieth ^century, the population of St. Petersburg is experiencing dramatic changes. It increased from 2.4 million in 1916 to less than 740,000 in 1920 following the October Revolution of 1917 and the Russian Civil War. Nationals of the largest minorities of Germans, Poles, Finns, Estonians and Lithuanians are almost all expelled from Leningrad by the Soviet government during the 1930s. Between 1918 and 1990 , the Soviet government nationalized apartments and forced the inhabitants to live in communal apartments. In the 1930s, this type of housing is the lot of nearly 68% of city residents, the highest proportion of all Russian cities. From 1941 to 1943 , the population decline of 3 million to under 700,000 following the death of over one million of its inhabitants during the siege of Leningrad, with the balance due to evacuations. After the end of the siege, the population returns to its previous figure, but those who move are mostly from other regions of the Soviet Union. The city accounts for nearly 3 million new residents during the 1950s and its population rises to 5 million in 1980. From 1991 to 2006 , the population decreased to current figure of 4.6 million with an increasing proportion of the population living in outlying areas.

The birth rate (9.7 per thousand in 2007) remains below the rate of death; those over age 65 constitute more than 20% of the population and the average age is over 40 years.

Districts

Districts Map of St. Petersburg

Gatchina Palace

Economy and transportation

Economy

Bridge Ismailovsky

Nevsky Prospect , a major financial center

Establishment of LMZ turbine manufacturer on the Neva

The port of St. Petersburg (2003)

St. Petersburg is a communications center and a major site of research and industry in Russia. As in much of Russia, the economic benefits since the early 2000s the financial prosperity that comes from rising commodity prices, but the relative weight of St. Petersburg in the Russian economy and its role are symbolic in steady decline despite the deliberate policy of the municipal staff of the team of Mayor Anatoly Sobchak (1991-1996) and the support of more senior Russian leaders (Vladimir Putin is a child of the city). St. Petersburg has lost its status as the second capital and tends to return to being a mere regional capital ). St. Petersburg include companies related to virtually all industries, the shipbuilding industry and machine tools are particularly well represented. All the icebreakers and the majority of atomic submarines are built in St. Petersburg. The main industrial sectors are also well represented in electronics (mainly for the aviation and aerospace ), new materials, energy production (LMZ is one of the largest turbine manufacturers in the world), medical devices the sectors of health and preventive medicine and environmental engineering. The automotive industry is foreign, which has a growing share of the Russian market, installed in nearly half the cases, its assembly plants in the region, like General Motors or Scania for assembly, or although Continental AG for making tires. St. Petersburg, Detroit Russian, was chosen mainly due to pressures and incentives of Russian leaders. Several foreign multinationals have also installed as Wrigley , Gillette , Rothmans , SEB , Unilever , Japan Tobacco and Coca-Cola. The Baltika brewery , a local company based in equal parts by the Danish Carlsberg and Scottish & Newcastle Scottish , conducted in 2005 nearly one billion turnover and is the largest brewery in Russia and second in size Europe. The joint venture created in 1990 in St. Petersburg is rapidly becoming a major undertaking for the city.

Fiscal measures have helped to attract the headquarters of several large Russian companies, mainly those with high state ownership, have relocated their headquarters, located in Moscow earlier on the banks of the Neva. Taxes and the oil subsidiary of Gazprom, " Gazprom Neft ", the bank general Vneshtorgbank (VTB), the owner Sovtorgflot , the firm of pipelines Transneftprodukt or airline Transaero should in future supply the municipal budget.

The gravel , the sandstone , the clay and peat are extracted in the territory of the city. However, agriculture plays no role in the local economy. At 80 km from Saint-Petersburg, in the town of Sosnovy Bor , is a large nuclear plant that produces 50% of electricity consumed in the region.

The port infrastructure of St. Petersburg are the first Russian commercial port and cover about 25% of the transit of Russian merchant.

St. Petersburg was the main port of the fleet of the Soviet Union and much of warships and submarines are still in the military port of the city. The first motor boat powered diesel , vandalism, built in 1903 in Rybinsk , was based in St. Petersburg. Before perestroika, the military-industrial complex represented 80% of the city's economy.

Some companies known worldwide since the Soviet period are from St. Petersburg and have their headquarters as: the editor Prospekt Nauki , renowned for its scientific publications, the combine optical, whose camera Lomo LC-A to poor optical quality is the source of an original artistic phenomenon: the Lomography. And the flagship of Soviet industry watch the watch factory Petrodvorets which produces the famous watch Raketa.

The tourism plays an increasing role in the economy of St. Petersburg. According to UNESCO , the city made the top 10 destinations for holidaymakers.

Transportation

Metro Map of Saint Petersburg

The city is a major communications nodes of the country. It is the center of the regional road and rail network and it has a vital seaport for Russia (the delta of the Neva , at the bottom of the Gulf of Finland , offers an open sea in Russia on the Baltic Sea ). The city, which is the terminus of the waterway Volga-Baltic linking the Baltic to the Black Sea , has several river ports (in the delta of the Neva).

St. Petersburg is a city where public transit is more developed. The development of the port complex is one of the priorities of the country since the independence of the Baltic States, whose ports today capture a substantial part of goods flows. In the medium term, the subway network to be extended about forty miles and a line of RER from the Gare Saint-Petersburg must be built to relieve the network of bus, tram and metro.

Metro

Volkovskaya Station

Finland Station

Station Nevsky Prospekt

The city is served by a network of underground entirely underground opened in 1955. Due to the marshy nature of the terrain, it was necessary to dig a tunnel into the layer of granite located deep: it is the deepest subway in the world as far as 90 meters down depth. It currently has five lines with 63 stations spread over 109.8 km of network (average distance between stations 1 800 meters) and carries more than 3.43 million daily passengers . The oldest network stations are sumptuously decorated (marble, artwork, lamps), particularly the stations and Avtovo Narvskaa. Both stations are part of the line-Kirovskoe Vyborgskaya (in Russian : -) who has many works of art, including sculptures, stained glass and murals.

Trains

Metro St. Petersburg

The city has five main stations serving various directions: the Baltic stations, Vitebsk, Ladoga, Moscow, and Finland. St. Petersburg has regular connections with Helsinki via Vyborg (Russian side) and Kouvola and Lahti (Finnish side). Three beautiful old-fashioned trains - the Sibelius, Repin and Tolstoi - run exclusively on this route.

Vitebsk Station ( ) is the oldest station of Saint-Petersburg, architecture style is Art Nouveau (stained glass, wood paneling in some rooms) with a tone of yellow ocher and white. That's where the first train from Moscow arrived in September 1851. Vitebsk Station was restored (2001-2003) to mark the tercentenary of the creation of St. Petersburg. Before the First World War, the North-Express went directly from St. Petersburg to Paris. St. Petersburg has a regional rail network ("Elektritschka") extending very far, Leningrad Oblast, it serves some towns in the Novgorod Oblast , the Pskov Oblast and the Republic of Karelia.

Trams, trolleybuses and buses

Station Baltiiskaa

The city of St. Petersburg has a network of buses and trolleybuses developed. The network of trams in Saint Petersburg was once the largest in the world. It comprises 2007 38 lines and 220 km of track. Since the liberalization of the Russian economy, municipal authorities have chosen to focus on individual modes of transport over 120 km of lines were deleted from the 1960s to make room for motor vehicles (especially in the downtown ) and investments are minimized. The park includes nearly 1,000 cars is aging. Trams and trolleybuses transport about 475 million passengers per annum in the 2000s . The tram faces competition from private minibuses (the "Marchroutkas") which connect the same lines with higher frequency but at a higher cost. This mode has captured a significant market share of public transport in the city.

Shop "Gavanski"

Roads

St. Petersburg is served by twelve major roads. Currently, we construct a wider highway around the city. The deviation to the east to avoid crossing the city was opened to public in December 2005.

Zvenigorodskaa Station

Commercial Dock

A ferry line serving Kaliningrad. Other links exist with Stockholm , Helsinki , Kiel , Rostock , Lbeck , Sassnitz and other Baltic Sea ports. The main front-ports of St. Petersburg are at Ust-Luga and Vysotsky.

Airports

The city is served by two airports located approximately twelve miles south of downtown. After Moscow it is the second airport hub of Russia (6 million passengers in 2007 ):

• the international airport Pulkovo II for international flights. Many airlines serving St. Petersburg, the Russian airline Pulkovo Aviation Enterprise (FV IATA);
• Pulkovo I airport for domestic flights.

It has two terminals, the II on international flights and domestic flights I. It is part of Pulkovo Aviation. It lies about 17 miles south of St. Petersburg, in the district called Pulkovo.

Teaching and Research

Building of the Academy of Fine Arts

Historically, St. Petersburg was the scientific center of Russia in this city were created in the eighteenth ^century the great Russian scientific institutions, under the leadership of Peter the Great and Catherine II. Today the city is always near Moscow, the largest center of higher education and scientific research. Ago in St. Petersburg 120 universities , high schools and technical colleges. Of these, 43 are public, 22 military and 50 managed by the private sector but with degrees recognized by the state. The best known are the University of St. Petersburg , the University of Economics and Finance , the Polytechnic University , the Academy of Fine Arts , the Conservatory Rimsky-Korsakov and the Military Academy of Logistics and Transport.

In the city, 600,000 inhabitants are dedicated to teaching and research, with approximately 340,000 students. Several Nobel Prizes have been awarded to persons living or working in the city: the last to be rewarded is Jores Alferov Nobel Prize for Physics in 2000.

Panorama

Place du Palais.

Famous People

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

Vladimir Putin

Dmitry Medvedev

Were born in St. Petersburg:

• Rostopchin Sophie, Countess de Segur ( in 1799 - 1 874 ), writer
• Ladislaus Bortkiewicz ( in 1868 - one thousand nine hundred and thirty-one ), mathematician
• Nikolai Krylov Mitrofanovich ( one thousand eight hundred and seventy-nine - one thousand nine hundred fifty-five ), mathematician
• Marcelle Gniat ( one thousand eight hundred and eighty-one - 1959 ), French actress
• Anna Pavlova ( 1,882 - 1 931 ), ballerina
• Sacha Guitry ( one thousand eight hundred and eighty-five - 1 957 ), playwright and filmmaker
• Eugene Minkowski ( 1885 - 1,972 ), French psychiatrist
• Alexandre Iacovleff ( 1,887 - 1 938 ), Africanist and Orientalist painter
• Vladimir Smirnov ( 1887 - 1,974 ), mathematician
• Serge Elisseeff ( 1889 - in 1975 ), orientalist
• Sandra Milowanoff ( 1 892 - 1,957 ), movie actress
• Mary Marquet ( 1 894 - in 1979 ), actress
• Leonid Moguy ( 1898 or 1899 - 1976 ) French filmmaker of Russian origin
• Vladimir Nabokov ( 1 899 - 1977 ), writer
• Mischa Auer ( 1905 - in 1967 ), actor
• a href = "Dmitri_Chostakovitch" title = "Dmitri Shostakovich"> Dmitri Shostakovich ( in 1906 - one thousand nine hundred and seventy-five ), composer
• George Sanders ( 1906 - 1972 ), actor
• Alexandre Mnouchkine ( in 1908 - one thousand nine hundred ninety-three ), film producer
• Leon Poliakov ( 1,910 - 1 997 ), French historian
• Nicolas de Stael ( 1914 - 1 955 ), painter
• Leon Zitrone ( one thousand nine hundred and fourteen - 1995 ), French journalist
• Irena Szewinska ( 1946 -), athlete, Olympic gold medal
• Vladimir Putin ( 1952 -), President of the Russian Federation from 2000 to 2008, premier of the Russian Federation since 2008
• Viktor Tsoi ( in 1962 - 1990 ), rock musician
• Dmitri Medvedev ( 1965 -), President of the Russian Federation since 2008
• Oleg Salenko ( 1969 -), footballer
• Iagoudine Alexei ( 1980 -), skater
• Archavine Andrei ( 1981 -), footballer
• Vladimir Karpets ( 1980 -), cyclist
• Mikhail Ignatiev ( 1985 -), cyclist
• Svetlana Kuznetsova ( 1985 -), tennis player

Died in St. Petersburg:

• Gabriel-Franois Doyen ( one thousand seven hundred twenty-six - in 1806 ), historical painter born in Saint-Germain l'Auxerrois
• Fedor Rostopchine ( 1 763 - 1826 ), Lieutenant-General, Minister of Foreign Affairs and father Rostopchin Sophie, Countess de Segur
• Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin ( one thousand seven hundred ninety-nine - 1 837 ), writer
• Fyodor Dostoevsky ( one thousand eight hundred twenty-one - one thousand eight hundred and eighty-one ), writer
• Piotr Tchaikovsky ( one thousand eight hundred forty - one thousand eight hundred ninety-three ), composer
• Cesar Antonovich Cui ( 1,835 - 1918 ), composer
• Yakov Perelman ( 1 882 - one thousand nine hundred and forty-two ), mathematician and physicist
• Anna Akhmatova ( 1889 - one thousand nine hundred sixty-six ), poet acmiste
• Fridrikh Ermler ( 1898 - one thousand nine hundred and sixty-seven ), director
• Bobby Farrell ( 1 949 - 2 010 ), lead singer of Boney M

Gallery

The Academy of St. Petersburg	St. Isaac's Cathedral	Gatchina, view north	A piece of the thousands of Hermitage
The cruiser Aurora	Alexander Theatre on the square Ostrovsky	Nevsky Prospekt	Gatchina
Gatchina, for facade	St. Nicolas Cathedral	House Zinger	Quai des Anglais
Channel Griboedov	Nevsky Building	Nevski

Twinnings

The city of St. Petersburg maintaining cooperative relations with ^References

Bibliography

• Yves Gauthier , St. Petersburg, Flammarion, collection Heritage, Paris, 2003 ( ISBN 2-0801-11663 )
• Vladimir and Olga Berelowitch Medvedkova, History of St. Petersburg, Fayard, 1996, ( ISBN 978-2-213496013 )
• Catherine Zerdoun and Karine Greth, A Great Weekend in St. Petersburg, Hachette, 2009
• Albert van Dievoet, "Monographs industry. "Electric Lighting in Saint Petersburg", in L'Expansion Belgian illustrated monthly magazine, Brussels, April 1908, ^No. III, p. 112-114.
• Dominique Fernandez , The Magic White St. Petersburg, Gallimard, 01/2003, Collection Discoveries, Number 205, ( ISBN 2-07-042848-6 )
• Vladimir Fedorovski , The Romance of St. Petersburg or the Loves along the Neva, Rock
• Ettore Lo Gatto , The Myth of St. Petersburg, Dawn
• Aurraine Meaux, Saint-Petersburg. History, walks, anthology and dictionary, 2003, Laffont / Mouthpieces
• Senay Dominica, St. Petersburg, Engineering, madness, poetry of a city boreal The Renaissance of the book.
• Natalia Smirnova, St. Petersburg or the Rape of Europa, Olizane
• Harrison Salisbury, The 900 Days, Albin Michel

See also

Related articles

• Geography
  • Baltic Sea countries
  • Kronstadt
  • Lake Ladoga
  • Karelia
  • Leningrad Oblast
• Universities
  • State University of Economics and Finance St. Petersburg (Finec)
  • State University of Saint Petersburg
• Personalities
  • Casimir Stanislaus Gzowski
  • Marius Petipa
  • Jean-Baptiste Alexandre Le Blond
  • Domenico Trezzini , architect planner
  • Grigori Perelman , mathematician
• Other
  • Pulkovo Aviation , airline

External Links

• (Ru) (en) (de) (ja) Website
• Description of UNESCO
• (In) Encyclopedia of Saint Petersburg

World Heritage in Russia
Cultural	Historic Centre of Saint Petersburg and Related Groups of Monuments (1990) Kizhi Pogost (1990) The Kremlin and Red Square , Moscow (1990) Together historical, cultural and Solovetsky Islands (1992) Monuments of Vladimir and Suzdal (1992) Historic Monuments of Novgorod and its surroundings (1992) Architectural Ensemble of the Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius in Sergiev Posad (1993) Church of the Ascension, Kolomenskoye (1994) Whole monastery Ferapontov (2000) Historic and Architectural Complex of the Kazan Kremlin (2000) Curonian Spit (with Lithuania) (2000) Citadel, Ancient City and Fortress Buildings of Derbent (2003) Ensemble of the Novodevichy Convent (2004) Struve Geodetic Arc (with nine other countries) (2005) Historic Centre of the City of Yaroslavl (2005)
Natural	Virgin Komi Forests (1995) Lake Baikal (1996) Volcanoes of Kamchatka (1996) Golden Mountains of Altai (1998) Western Caucasus (1999) central Sikhote-Alin (2001) Basin Uvs Nuur (Mongolia) (2003) Natural System of Wrangel Island Reserve (2004) Putorana Plateau (2010)

Hero Cities of the Soviet Union
Leningrad (Russia) Odessa (Ukraine) Sebastopol (Ukraine) Stalingrad (Russia) Kiev (Ukraine) Brest (Belarus) Moscow (Russia) Kerch (Ukraine) Novorossiysk (Russia) Minsk (Belarus) Tula (Russia) Murmansk (Russia) Smolensk (Russia)

• Portal for Russia

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