It’s quite hard to imagine the skulking and shady characters of Dostoevsky’s pages wandering down the canals and boulevards of today’s Saint Petersburg, brooding existentially over the darker questions in life. No, nowadays this is a city of light, not shadow; a town that glistens with gold-hemmed architecture and the majestic Baroque.
But as any Saint Petersburg tourist guide will tell you, this 5-million strong metropolis on the cusp of the cold Balkan is no stranger to volte-face changes. It was once the brainchild of Peter the Great—who now stands immortalised in statuettes and honorific place names right across the city; then Petrograd—the monumental spearhead of nationalist Russia; then Leningrad—the symbolic prototype of the USSR’s mechanised metropolis.
Naturally history abounds here in the palaces and museums, but Petersburg has also aligned itself as a cultural hub of the New Russia; a centre of ballet and the arts, jazz, philharmonics, and even the avant-garde. Don’t expect an easy ride in this buzzing city; rather look forward to a veritable rollercoaster of cultural delights and contradictions.