Duration: 5 hours
Car: tourist class included
Guide: included
Entrance tickets: included
The Peter and Paul FortressIt is situated on the small island opposite the Winter Palace, controlling three branches of the Neva River. The fortress was constructed to protect the city from amphibious invasions. The fortress was a political prison; there tsars imprisoned their main competitors, mostly intellectuals. Now it is a museum, and also one of the best locations in the city for panoramic views from the south bank of the Neva River. Every day you can hear two shots of the gun. This means that it is 12 a.m. A small wooden fortress that initially was inside the big fortress grew and eventually became the cathedral. We will see the grave of Peter the Great, the founder of the city, and also the graves of all the Tsars of the Romanov dynasty and their families, including the grave of Nicholas II and his family, killed during the Russian revolution of 1918.
St. Isaac‘s CathedralDesigned and constructed by Spanish and French architects (one of them was Montferrand), St.Isaac’s Cathedral is one of the biggest in the world with its size and with its wealth of materials, used during construction and decoration, including the large amount of gold, malachite, lazurite, Finnish granite, 600 sq.m. of mosaics, numerous paintings and sculptures… More than 300000 workers took part in its construction, made difficult because of the swampy area, big construction and heavy materials. From the terrace that is near the dome on the top of the 43 m height column you can see the exclusive panorama of the city. Nowadays this cathedral is a museum; though there are religious services on the most important orthodox holidays; only one chapel is used every day.