St. Petersburg has as many faces as names - it is tsaristic, revolutionary, communistic and recently also sophisticated. The city will, however, seemingly never get rid of its mystical, gloomy and always hungry atmosphere.
St. Petersburg was originally built by forced labourers on marshland . Moreover it was struck by communism, flooded and attacked with bombs - the adoptive country of Peter the Great has only little to do with the Walt-Disney film "Anastasia" for which the city served as the setting. St. Petersburg is, contrary to the cartoon's abundant glamour rather wrapped in a tangible gloomy atmosphere. Even great writers and poets attested the city's dreamlike unreality which inspired many poets to write their most famous works. One of Fyodor Dostoyevskys figures said about the city that every time he came close to it, a cold breeze blew into his face and the stunning view was fulfilled with a dull and silent spirit.
The former St. Pieterburch was first renamed to Petrograd then to Leningrad, its inhabitants, however, always called it "Pieter". St. Petersburg is of course also known as the most northern metropolis in the world, as the '"Venice of the north", as the "window to Europe" and as the "city of the white nights". St. Petersburg is fascinating in many aspects - it is embedded in granite, surrounded by stately buildings and covered in a unique flair – and thus definitely worth seeing.
