Things to Do in Russia

The former residence of the imperial family Tsarskoye Selo (Ца́рское Село) or Tsar’s Village, is now one of Russia’s most significant cultural heritage sites. Comprising of the Alexander and Catherine Palaces and Parks, the site shares a historical value of over 300 years, and is widely considered one of the most beautiful sites in the region.

Catherine Palace (Большой Екатерининский дворец) has a fabulous façade built in Russian baroque and from the west is adjoined by the glamorous view from the front yard and the iron wrought iron fence.

Also in the area is the Hermitage Hall (Павильон Эрмитаж), which is now open after 70 years. It is studded in stucco décor, with azure walls, and beautiful white columns. You can also check out the Admiralty (Адмиралтейство) and Hall Groat (Павильон Грот).

The other major features of the converted village are the all important Alexander Palace and park. The park covers an area of over 120 hectacres, while the palace sprawls and elongate two-stories with double wings on either side, all while sporting a Corinthian colonnade through the center.

With its colorful onion-shaped domes, St. Basil’s Cathedral may be one of the most iconic sights in Moscow, if not in all of Russia. Finished in 1561, the cathedral sits on one end of Red Square and marks the geometric center of Moscow. For 40 years after its construction, it was the tallest building in the city, eventually surpassed by the Ivan the Great Bell Tower.

St. Basil’s actually consists of 10 separate churches. When the building was first constructed, eight side churches surrounded the main Church of Intercession. A 10th church was added in 1588 over the grave of the local saint, Basil. While the cathedral was built to celebrate the capture of Kazan by Ivan the Terrible, its side churches were designed to represent major events in Russian spiritual life in the second half of the 16th century.

The cathedral was confiscated from the Russian Orthodox community during Soviet times and now operates as a division of the State Historical Museum. It has been part of the Moscow Kremlin and Red Square UNESCO World Heritage site since 1990. Today, visitors can stroll through the galleries connecting the many churches while marveling at frescoes, oil paintings and Russian icons, many of which date to the 16th and 17th centuries.

With its gigantic golden dome coated with over 220 pounds of gold and an impressive red granite portico, St Isaac’s Cathedral looks more like a palace than a cathedral, and it’s no surprise that the eye-catching masterpiece is among St. Petersburg’s most visited attractions. Commissioned by Tsar Alexander I in 1818 to mark the defeat of Napoleon, the magnificent cathedral took over 40 years to build and still ranks among the largest domed cathedrals in the world, with a capacity for up to 14,000 worshippers.

Novodevichy Convent & Cemetery comprise one of Moscow’s most beautiful attractions. Also known as the New Maiden’s Convent, the convent may be best known as the place where Peter the Great imprisoned his half-sister Sofia after deposing her and taking over as tsar of Russia. He later confined his first wife to the convent as well. Originally built as a fortress in 1524 to commemorate the conquest of Smolensk, the convent features 12 battle towers. Most of the current buildings, however, date to the late 17th century, when the convent was substantially rebuilt.

The largest and most important church in the convent is the five-domed Cathedral of the Virgin of Smolensk. It was finished in 1525 and contains impressive icons dating to the 16th and 17th centuries. Almost as impressive as the Cathedral is the red and white Church of the Assumption, built in 1680.

The Novodevichy Cemetery sits adjacent to the convent and is one of the most prestigious resting places in all of Russia – as well as the third most popular tourist destination. Over 27,000 people are buried there, including Russian and Soviet notables such as writers Anton Chekhov and Nikolai Gogol, poet Vladimir Mayakovsky, former Soviet leader Nikita Krushchev and former Russian president Boris Yeltsin.
For those interested in locating particular graves, a map is available at the entrance.

Red Square is the central square in Moscow, sitting just northeast of the famous Kremlin. Once a marketplace, over the years it has been the sight of public ceremonies and proclamations, the occasional coronation and during Soviet times, military parades. Together with the Kremlin, it was named a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1990, one of the first sites in the Soviet Union to receive such designation. Today Red Square also serves as a major concert venue, with Paul McCartney, the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Shakira, among stars who have performed in recent years.

The main entrance to Red Square is through the Resurrection Gate, which was rebuilt in 1995 to copy the gate that was originally finished in 1680. At the center of the gateway stands a small chapel housing an icon known as the Iverian Virgin. It’s not uncommon to see crowds of people gathered around the chapel throughout the day.

Just inside the Resurrection Gate you will find the entrance to the State History Museum and Lenin’s Mausoleum, as well as the Kazan Cathedral and GUM – the State Department Store. The iconic St Basil’s Cathedral sits on the opposite end of the square. If you plan to visit Lenin’s Mausoleum, be sure to check your bag and camera at the State History Museum first, as you won’t be allowed to bring them inside.

The Peter and Paul Cathedral is an orthodox cathedral and burial place of Russian emperors dating as far back as Peter the Great.

As the oldest cathedral in St. Petersberg, it is considered one the tallest orthodox cathedrals in the world and also one of the most remarkable achievements of the baroque era, with a rectangular base, and containing an enormous bell-tower and landmark needle, all resembling western European architecture.

The bell-tower is the tallest in the world and contains a carillon composed of 51 bells totaling a weight of 33,422 pounds (15,160 kg) and ranges in such of variety of notes that it is not outside of the range of any piece of music.

Atop the cathedral also is one of St. Petersburg’s most important symbols, its golden spire, sitting 404 feet (123 m) above ground level.

Built in 1777 under commission of Catherine the Great and featuring the works of architects like Charles Cameron, Jacomo Quarengi and Carlo Rossi, the stately Pavlovsk Palace was a gift from the Empress to her son, the future Emperor Paul I, to mark the birth of her first grandson. A magnificent neoclassical complex set in an idyllic 1,500-acre estate, the palace is surrounded by landscaped parks and woodlands, and served as the summer residence for the Emperor and his wife, Maria Feodorovna, until his untimely death in 1801.

The Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts is the largest European art museum in Moscow, with over 560,000 works of art. Opened in 1912, it actually has no connection to Alexander Pushkin, the famous Russian poet – it was simply renamed in his honor in 1937 to mark the centenary of his death.

The museum includes an impressive collection of Dutch and Flemish masterpieces from the 17th century, including several works by Rembrandt, as well as Impressionist and Post-Impressionist works by painters such as Van Gogh, Matisse, Gauguin and Picasso. The latter are now housed in a new Gallery of European & American Art of the 19th and 20th centuries next door to the main museum building. Many of the museum’s paintings were obtained in the 1920s and 1930s when private estates were nationalized; other works were taken from the History Museum, the Kremlin Museum, the Hermitage and other museums in St Petersburg.

The Pushkin Museum is also home to an Ancient Civilizations exhibit featuring ancient Egyptian artifacts and a Treasures of Troy collection that includes pieces dating back to 2500 BC.

Originally named the Decembrists’ Square, after the December 1825 uprising, Senate Square (Ploschad Dekabristov) is one of St. Petersburg’s most famous public squares, encircled by some of the city’s top attractions.  Linked to the central hub of Palace Square by the 407 meter-long Admiralty building – the one-time Russian Naval Headquarters – Senate Square is also home to the grand Senate Building and the early 19th-century Cavalry Manege, now home to the Central Exhibition Hall, and backs onto the grounds of the gold-domed St Isaac’s Cathedral.

Founded in 1862, the Russian State Library features more than 43 million items in more than 240 languages, including 17.5 million books. The collection includes maps, sheet music, newspapers and audio recordings, as well as at least one copy of every book published in the country between 1922 and 1991. With more than 170 miles of shelves, it is the largest library in Russia and the fourth largest in the world. The main collection includes more than 200 private book collections belonging to popular Russian figures in science, culture and education, and a collection of rare books has more than 300,000 volumes. The State Library also holds regular educational and cultural events and has more than 30 reading rooms available for visitors to reserve.

Nevsky Prospekt (Не́вский проспе́кт) is the most famous street in Russia and main street of St. Petersberg, spanning from the Admiralty (Адмиралтейства) to the Alexander Nevsky Monastery (Александро-Невской лавры).

As a major central street in the city, Nevsky Prospekt is oft the stomping grounds for many holiday, national, and other celebrations, such as Victory Day, and Day of the City, hosting events from festivals to parades.

The street is also home to many sculptures that captures both Russian heroes and historical figures including Nevsky himself, Catherine the Great, city hero of Leningrad Obelisk, Kutuzov, and one of Mikhail Barclay do Tolly, located in the Kazan area.

No visit to St Petersburg is really complete without spending a few hours at the site where it all began – the Peter & Paul Fortress. This is the original citadel of the city, built on Hare Island near the north bank of the Neva River between 1706 and 1740. And this is where you can get a feel for St Petersburg’s more than 300 year old history, from royal tombs to prison blocks to historical museum exhibitions.

The Peter & Paul Fortress was originally built to protect Russia’s new capital from a possible Swedish attack, but it never really served that purpose. Instead, it soon became a prison for high-ranking and political prisoners, beginning with Alexey, the son of Peter the Great. In 1872, a new prison within the walls of the Trubetskoy Bastion was built and over the next forty years, it held thousands of prisoners who were considered to be enemies of the state. These political prisoners included the likes of Feodor Dostoevsky, Leon Trotsky and Maxim Gorky and then, after the Bolshevik Revolution, members of the Tsarist government.  The prison was turned into a museum in 1924 and today you can walk through the corridors, visit some of the cells and view documents and photographs that tell the story of Imperial Russia’s main political prison.

The most visible landmark within the Peter & Paul Fortress is the Peter & Paul Cathedral, whose spire stands more than 400 feet tall and features an angel at the top holding a cross. Built between 1712 and 1733, the cathedral was one of the first in Russia to be decorated with paintings and icons. The iconostasis was carved by Moscow craftsmen in the 1720s and contains 43 original icons from the 18th century. The bell tower of the cathedral is the world’s largest Orthodox bell tower and at the base of the tower lay the tombs of the Romanov monarchs. Every tsar and tsarina from Peter the Great to Nicholas II is buried within the Peter & Paul Cathedral, except Peter II and Ivan VI. Connected to the main cathedral by a corridor is the Grand Ducal Mausoleum, built between 1896 and 1908 to serve as a burial place for non-reigning members of the Romanov family.

In the Commandant’s House within the fortress, you will find displays exploring the early history of St Petersburg in the 18th and 19th centuries, including paintings, maps and layouts and pieces of graphic and applied art. Another section of the house aims to provide insight into the daily life of St Petersburg citizens in the 19th century. Exhibits reflect themes such as commerce and banking, life in an apartment house, transportation and city fashion.

After visiting the main sites within the fortress, spend some time walking along the top of the fortress walls for superb views of central St Petersburg, including the massive St Isaac’s Cathedral.  If you are visiting St Petersburg in the summer, save some time to relax on the sandy beaches along the shores of the Neva. Finally, keep an eye out for temporary exhibitions that often provide even greater insight into St Petersburg’s vast history.