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Tips & Traps
Insider advice from Local Friends and travelers. What to do, and what to avoid, city by city.
- TipA place or a move worth it
- TrapWhat to avoid, and how
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Insider advice from Local Friends and travelers. What to do, and what to avoid, city by city.
Join RALF to share your own tips and traps
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From May to July the nights never get fully dark, and light at three in the morning can look like day. Before you book, check that the room has blackout curtains or blinds, and pack a sleep mask. One resident says that even thick curtains and a mask do not stop early waking, so ask for a room away from the street and…
Admiralteysky is as central as the Tsentralny district but calmer, with St Isaac Cathedral and the Mariinsky Theatre close by. Guides advise against booking right on Nevsky Prospect because of traffic noise, so look for a side street or courtyard room. Staying on the same bank as the Hermitage also keeps you clear of…
The Peterhof fountains are shut off and covered in winter, then run again from late April. The opening festival is usually held in mid-May, with music and a show at the Grand Cascade. Check the museum-reserve site for the year schedule. Go by hydrofoil from the piers near the Hermitage, though strong wind can cancel…
Each May the park on Yelagin Island holds a tulip festival, with large flower beds, a music programme and exhibitions in the palace rooms. It usually runs for a week or two in mid to late May, and organisers mark the first weekend as peak bloom. Buy entry on the park website, go on a weekday morning for fewer people…
The Jazz Philharmonic Hall on Zagorodny Prospekt has presented jazz since 1989 and holds concerts most evenings except Monday. The big hall has a bar, a dance floor and two or three sets, while the small Ellington Hall is an intimate room of 45 seats. See the programme on the hall website before you go, buy tickets at…
The Grand Hall of the St Petersburg Philharmonia, in the former Noble Assembly building on Mikhailovskaya Street, has been the home of the Philharmonic Orchestra since 1921 and is known for its acoustics. Premieres by Borodin, Mussorgsky, Tchaikovsky and others took place here. Check the programme on the Philharmonia…
Dom Knigi occupies the former Singer sewing machine company building at Nevsky 28, a six-storey Art Nouveau landmark with a glass-globe tower that is lit in the evening. Browse the shelves of fiction and travel writing on several floors, then have coffee in the second-floor Singer cafe, whose windows face Kazan…
Kuznechny Market stands in a lane near Vladimirskaya Square, in a historic hall where farmers from the Leningrad and Pskov regions sell beside permanent stallholders. Locals head for the meat and dairy rows, where you can ask for the exact cut, and in autumn the stalls fill with grapes, plums and melons. Prices at…
The Lakhta Center observation deck, around 365 metres up, sells tickets only on the official Lakhta Center website, so avoid resale sites. Tickets are for a fixed time with no open dates, and you must arrive no earlier than fifteen minutes before and no later than fifteen minutes after the start, or the ticket is…
The colonnade around the dome of St Isaac Cathedral gives wide views over the rooftops, the Admiralty and the Neva. In summer it also opens for evening sessions, which suits golden hour and the long White Nights glow. The climb ends in a narrow passage and it is windy at the top, so bring a layer. Weekdays and…
The Faberge Museum in the Shuvalov Palace on the Fontanka holds more than 4,000 works by the jeweller, and nine of them are imperial Easter eggs made for the last two tsars. It is open seven days a week, which helps when the big state museums are shut. Use the museum ticket page, add the audio guide, and finish with a…
The General Staff Building on Palace Square is part of the Hermitage and holds French painting from the second half of the 19th century, including Impressionists and Post-Impressionists, with rooms of Matisse, Picasso and other 20th-century masters. Lower floors cover Art Nouveau and imperial history. It has its own…
The main Hermitage complex is closed on Mondays, on 1 January and on 9 May. Entry is by timed session, and a ticket is valid only for the chosen session on the day of the visit. The ticket offices stop selling an hour before closing, and opening hours change by weekday, so some days run later. Book a session for a…
A Podorozhnik card covers the metro, buses, trams and trolleybuses. Buy it at a metro ticket office, top it up and tap at any validator. On surface transport a second ride within the hour costs less and further rides can be free, while each metro entry counts as a new trip. Minibuses called marshrutki do not take it…
From April to November the Neva bridges lift in the small hours, with the Palace Bridge typically up between about one and five in the morning, and times change from night to night. If you watch from Vasilyevsky Island or the Petrograd Side and your hotel is on the other bank, you can wait for hours. Check the…
From Finlyandsky Station, commuter trains run to the Kurortny District on the Gulf of Finland, where sandy beaches with tall pines and rocky stretches line the water near Sestroretsk, Solnechnoye, Repino and Komarovo. Pick one stop, walk the shore, and add Dubki Park in Sestroretsk. Go on a clear day in summer and…
Yelagin Island is a protected park in the Neva delta with flat paved paths under old trees. The park rents bicycles, roller skates, boats and catamarans for its ponds and canals. Come on a weekday morning for quiet, and use metro Staraya Derevnya or Krestovsky Ostrov. Petersburgers treat it as a weekend escape, so…
Pirozhkovaya Khozyushka on Moskovsky Prospekt is one of the oldest public eateries in the city and keeps its old routine: you pay at the cashier, get a ticket, then take it to the counter for your pastries. Try a cabbage or potato pirozhok and a cottage cheese vatrushka with coffee. It is near Park Pobedy metro, so…
Sytny Market sits on the Petrogradskaya Side, a short walk from the Peter and Paul Fortress, and is one of the oldest markets in the city. It still works as a food market inside a stone hall from 1913. Go for the meat section, the usual stop for cooks buying for a specific dish, and browse the other rows for picnic…
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