St.Petersburg City Tour with visit to the Peter and Paul Fortress

City tour can be arranged at a time convenient for the clients. It is possible to select the starting point of the tour, where our driver and a guide will pick up the group. Extra places to visit can be included in the tour on your request.

City tour programme:
Nevsky Prospekt, The Palace Square,Winter Palace, Kazan Cathedral, Arts Square and the Russian Museum, the Menshikov Palace, the Imperial Academy of Arts and visit into Peter and Paul Fortress.

The Peter and Paul Fortress 
Opening hours -11a.m-18p.m
Closed on Wednesday;

The Peter and Paul Fortress occupies a special place in the history of St Petersburg. It was with this citadel, founded on 16 (27 New Style) May 1703 by Domenico Trezzini and called “Sankt-Pieterburgh” in a Dutch manner, that the city which was to become the capital of the Russian Empire began.

The ground-plan of the fortress on Hare Island was a stretched hexagon: six curtain walls linked six massive bastions protruding towards an attacker. Peter the Great personally supervised the construction of one bastion and entrusted the others to his closest associates: Menshikov, Golovkin, Zotov, Trubetskoi and Naryshkin. The main gate was placed in the curtain wall between the Tsar and Menshikov Bastions. It faced St Petersburg’s earliest bridge that connected the fortress with the neighbouring Birch Island. A moat was dug out in front of the gate and an earthworks ravelin (V-shaped outwork) piled up to protect it from artillery fire. In order to provide the garrison with water in the event of a siege, a special canal was out the length of the island.

The Peter and Paul Cathedral
Domenico Trezzini designed this magnificent Cathedral of SS. Peter and Paul within the fortress in 1712. He produced a Baroque masterpiece of singular elegance. The interior, with its glittering chandeliers, pink and green Corinthian columns, and overarching vaults, is a far cry from the traditional Russian Orthodox church.