SANKT PETERSBURG, RUSSIA

St. Petersburg is Russia’s second largest city and its former capital. The city was built after 1703 by Peter I (Peter the Great), who sought a Russian outlet to the sea and port for trade throughout the Baltic. Italian and French architects planned the city, giving it a spacious, classical beauty. One of the world’s most brilliant capitals and cultural centres, St. Petersburg was immortalized in great novels of Pushkin, Turgenev, Dostoyevsky, and Tolstoy. It became an international centre of literature, music, theatre, and ballet in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries. St. Petersburg has also been the scene of great social upheaval. Secret revolutionary societies sprang up prior to the Russian Revolution, and the workers, soldiers, and sailors of the city spearheaded the revolution of February and October, 1917. The city was renamed Petrograd in 1914 and Leningrad in 1924. Captured by the Germans in 1941, it was besieged by German armies for more than two years, when thousand died of famine and disease. Among the city’s architectural monuments are the Winter Palace, the Hermitage museum, the fortress of Peter and Paul, the Cathedral of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, the Academy of Arts, and the Marble Palace. Leningrad has a university (established 1804), numerous theatres, museums, scientific and medical institutes, and libraries, including the Saltykov-Shchedrin Public Library and the Academy of Sciences Library.