Music, Art, Culture and Gastronomy: A St. Petersburg Experience
About the tour
The great city of St Petersburg is a byword for grandeur and opulence. Built in 1703 by the westward looking Peter the Great as a symbol of Russia’s growing status, it went on to become the Romanov’s magnificent showcase capital. It lost its status as capital after the revolution, but some might argue in name only; St Petersburg still feels every bit the imperial city with its historic heart largely frozen in time.
Built around the Neva River and crisscrossed by canals linked by 342 bridges, St Petersburg is often known as the Venice of the North. Its historic centre is filled with canals lined by Italianate mansions and elegant plazas adorned with baroque and neoclassical palaces. It is also an almost unrivalled repository of culture and art, with its extraordinary galleries, museums, music venues and ballet.
St Petersburg is dazzling all year round but there is a special charm to the winter season. Five full days take you to some of the stunning historical, architectural and cultural highlights of this incomparable city. Stay in one of its most elegant historic hotels, situated in the heart of chic Nevsky Prospekt, and enjoy the finest food, wine and vodka offerings in the midst of a winter wonderland unlike anywhere else.
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Your tour leader
Janice Liverseidge
Until recently Janice Liverseidge was a Director at The Royal Society of Medicine and is now a full time guide and in her spare time a trustee of both the Royal Medical Benevolent Fund and the London Handel Festival. Earlier in her career she worked for the British Medical Association. She is also a registered Blue Badge tourist guide and regularly leads groups in London on medical history walks, tours of the Wellcome Collection and other healthcare locations plus provides music and art tours for the Foundling Museum and the London Handel Festival. Janice has travelled extensively, including an eight month journey around India, South East Asia and Australia, and has led highly successful RSM tours to Vietnam and Cambodia, Sri Lanka, Cuba, South Africa and China.
Janice has the Visit Britain "Good to Go" Industry standard demonstrating that she has shown her compliance with government and industry COVID-19 guidelines, has a Risk Assessment in place and ensures social distancing including using a phone app when providing tour commentaries.
Need more information?
- Tel: (Toll Free) 1-8777-398-764
- Mon-Fri: 9am-5pm
Itinerary at a glance
- Day 1: St Petersburg (Sat, 4 Dec) Meet your guide at the airport and transfer to the Belmond Grand Hotel Europe via the house of Russian chemist, Dmitri Mendeleev, who developed the periodic classification of the elements. Welcome dinner at L’Europe, Russia’s oldest continually serving restaurant and known for its Art Nouveau décor and stained glass murals.
- Day 2: St Petersburg (Sun, 5 Dec ) Morning visit to the State Hermitage Museum, one of the world’s largest and oldest museums. Set in the magnificent Winter Palace and adjoining buildings, it has over three million items in its collection, a fraction of which are on display in 360 rooms. Lunch at the Hermitage museum café. Visit the Anna Akhmatova Literary and Memorial Museum, a literary museum dedicated to Anna Akhmatova, a a significant poet of the 20th century who was shortlisted for the Nobel Prize in 1965. See inside the lavish interior of St Isaac’s Cathedral. Dinner at a restaurant that contains a vodka museum and enjoy a degustation menu with vodka pairings.
- Day 3: St Petersburg (Mon, 6 Dec) Transfer to Pushkin (formerly known as Tsarskoe Selo) to visit the Palace of Catherine the Great, a stunning building with a blue and white facade with a circumference of nearly 1km that contains the famous Amber Room. Enjoy traditional Russian cuisine at Podvorje for lunch followed by optional horse-sledding or horse-carriage riding in the park (this is weather dependant e.g. if there is not enough snow then you will ride in carriages). In the evening have dinner at Sadko.
- Day 4: St Petersburg (Tues, 7 Dec) Visit The House of the Book, St Petersburg's most famous bookstore since 1938, built in a beautiful Art Nouveau building that originally housed the Singer Sewing Machine Company. Continue to Kazan Cathedral to hear choral music and then onto the Peter and Paul Fortress, the first building and original citadel of St. Petersburg. Visit the elegant Eliseev Emporium in Nevsky Prospect and enjoy a samovar tea with lunch and cakes at Mezonin, located in a secluded area behind the orchestra gallery. Visit Yusupov Palace, one of the two remaining St. Petersburg residences of the monumentally wealthy Yusupov family, and the scene of Grigory Rasputin’s assassination. It is one of the few aristocratic homes in the city to have retained many of its original interiors after the revolution. Option to see opera or ballet.
- Day 5: St Petersburg (Wed, 8 December) Visit the Fabergé Museum, a small, elegant museum housed within a beautiful 18th century palace. This lovely private museum houses some of the famous Fabergé eggs, the most expensive Easter eggs in the world, as well as some extraordinary items of Russian goldsmithing from the 19th and early 20th centuries. Visit the house museum of the Russian ballet dancer, Matilda Kshesinskaya, which outlines the history of St Petersburg from the early 20th century until the Revolution of 1917. Return to the hotel and at leisure or option to visit the nearby Russia Museum with its collection of Russian art from the 10th to the 21st century. In the evening enjoy a farewell dinner at Menua, a restaurant serving traditional Armenian cuisine.
- Day 6: St Petersburg (Thurs, 9 December) Depart St Petersburg after breakfast.
Tour cost
The cost of the tour is USD $2,464 per person sharing (excl. flights and transfers)