St. Petersburg Environs Travel Guide

If St. Petersburg is the star of the show, then its suburbs are the supporting cast without which the story could not be told. For every aspect of the city's past—the glamour and glory of its Imperial era, the pride and power of its military history, the splendor of its architecture, the beauty of its waterways—there's a park, a palace, a playground of the tsars somewhere outside the city limits with a corresponding tale to tell. From the dazzling fountains of Peterhof on the shores of the Gulf of Finland, to the tranquil estate of Pavlovsk to the south, to the naval stronghold of Kronshtadt—a quiet town with a turbulent history and a still-Soviet feel (and once completely closed to foreigners)—what surrounds St. Petersburg is as important to its existence and identity as anything on Nevsky prospekt. It might seem odd to exhort you to get out of the city almost as soon as you have arrived, but you'll understand why once you have seen the suburbs for yourself, wandered through the palaces imagining what it would be like to call them home, and strolled through the grounds in the footsteps of the aristocrats and officers who made Russia a world power.