Best of St. Petersburg in 3 to 10 Days

Best of St. Petersburg in 3 to 10 Days

If You Have 3 Days

If you have only three days, begin your visit of the city on Vasilievsky Island and the left bank. Most of the city's historic sites are here, including the Rostral Columns, the Admiralteistvo (Admiralty), and St. Isaac's Cathedral. After lunch is the right time to tackle the gargantuan Hermitage, one of the world's richest repositories of art. Spend the rest of the afternoon wandering through its vast galleries. Devote the morning of your second day to visiting the Peter and Paul Fortress and the Petrograd Side. Spend the afternoon in the State Museum of Russian Art, one of the country's most important art galleries.

On your third day, consider an excursion to Pushkin (formerly Tsarskoye Selo), south of St. Petersburg, once the summer residence of the Imperial family and a popular summer resort for the Russian aristocracy. The main attraction here is the Catherine Palace, with its magnificent treasures and the surrounding park filled with waterfalls, boating ponds, and marble statues. Should you choose to spend the whole day here, you can have lunch and then visit the Lyceum, formerly a school for the Russian nobility and now a museum.

If You Have 7 Days

Follow the three-day itinerary described above. Devote your fourth day to St. Petersburg's inner streets, squares, and gardens. Begin with the grandeur of Ploshchad Iskusstv, or Square of the Arts. Here you can visit the Ethnography Museum before moving on to the colorful Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood and Marsovo Pole (Field of Mars). Finish your walk at the Summer Garden with its famous railing designed by Yuri Felten in 1779. After lunch, visit the Kazan Cathedral. On the fifth day, head west of St. Petersburg to Peterhof (Petrodvorets), accessible by hydrofoil. The best time to visit is in summer, when the fountains, lush parks, and the magnificent Great Palace are at their best. Spend your sixth day at the Alexander Pushkin Apartment Museum, where the beloved poet Pushkin died, and at Menshikov Palace, the first stone building in St. Petersburg. Devote your seventh day to an excursion to the estate and Great Palace at Pavlovsk, only a few miles from the Catherine Palace in Pushkin and 30 km (18 mi) south of St. Petersburg.

If You Have 10 Days

Follow the seven-day itinerary above. On your eighth day, travel 39 km (24 mi) west of St. Petersburg to reach the town of Lomonosov, site of the only luxurious Imperial summer residence to have survived World War II intact. With its seaside location and splendid park, it's an ideal place to spend a summer's day. On your ninth day, visit Yusupov Palace, now a museum with a concert hall and a theater, on the banks of the Moika River. It was in this beautiful prerevolutionary mansion that the "mad monk," Rasputin, was killed. You could also use this day (or part of this day) to return to the magnificent Hermitage. Devote your last day in St. Petersburg to the Piskaryevskoye Kladbische, a mass burial ground for half a million victims of the 900-day siege of Leningrad during World War II. Visit the museum and its collection of memoirs and photographs documenting that terrible time.