It is for three centuries
now that St. Petersburg delights visitors to the northern capital of Russia
with its majestic appearance. Few large cities in the world can bear comparison
to St. Petersburg as concerns the fastness of its birth, developments and
flowering.
There is hardly any similarly daring and ambitious
city that even in its cradle claimed for the right to be on a par with the
major centers of European civilization.
Saint-Petersburg is a very young
city compared to old European capitals. It is probably the only city in the
world that has acquired so much historic importance in such a short space of
time.
It was founded in 1703 as an outlet to the Baltic Sea, which was very important
for Russia's future development from both strategic and economical points of
view. Saint Petersburg was considered to be "a key for paradise" for Russian
Empire, so the city's name is very symbolic: it was called in the honor of
Saint Peter, who, as we know from the Holy Bible, is a keeper of the keys
from paradise.
Saint Petersburg today is one of the most important
cultural, scientific and industrial cities in Russia, housing several
hundreds museums and exhibition halls.
Great Russian and foreign artists, poets, writers and composers admired the
beauty of Saint Petersburg and commemorated it in their works.
The majestic architectural ensembles of St. Petersburg stretching along the
banks of the wide and deep Neva decorated the diverging rays of its
thoroughfares and the vistas of its squares. The granite ledges of embankments,
metal arrows of drawbridges, imposing silhouettes of churches, palaces and
monuments, as well as museums, theatres and libraries won to the city on the
Neva a worldwide renown.
The beautiful city was created by joint efforts of outstanding Russian and
European architects, engineers, painters, sculptors, scholars and men of
letters, actors and musicians, by an energetic and inspired work of all its
inhabitants who implemented Peter the Great’s dream about the northern capital
of new Russia.
