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History of Saint Petersburg

St. Petersburg is of special significance for Russia. It is smaller than Moscow but no less important. One of the youngest cities of Russia and the biggest one of North Europe appeared on the map at the pleasure of one man – Russian Tzar Peter the Great.

St. Petersburg has not got a very long story but it was witness to great historic events over last three centuries. From the very beginning of the 18th century the city was being built as the capital of the new empire that became immediately the most talked about all over the world.

The names of the city were changed several times bowing to public sentiment: in 1914 when the WWI broke out and the name “St. Petersburg” sounded German, the authorities decided to translate the name from German into Russian, and it became Petrograd – the city of Peter, after Lenin’s death in 1924 the name was changed again to Leningrad and it was so till 1991, when there was the opinion poll and people voted for the name should be changed to its historical name – St. Petersburg.

St. Petersburg got lots of epithets. Poets and artists, writers and musicians, scientists and architects, devoted their best works and their best years to this city. The “Venice of the North”, the city of “white nights”, magnificent St. Petersburg, the cultural capital or the capital of the Beast? Sometimes it is splendid, sometimes it is dreadful, and always different but recognizable.

One cannot mistake St. Petersburg for other cities, it is the one and only. One thing is obvious – nobody will be indifferent to St. Petersburg. Come and visit this legendary city and you will know what side of it you’ll see, what souvenirs it will leave in your memory. Come to St. Petersburg and you will understand why it is so attractive for different people from all parts of the world. The choice is yours!