Visit St.Petersburg

Names and Nicknames of Saint-Petersburg

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Saint-Petersburg (after Saint-Peter, who was the patron saint of the founder of the city Peter the Great)

Petrograd 1914-1924 (Dutch ending –burg sounded like German, it was the First World War, we were fighting Germany – so the city was given the name with Russian ending –grad, which means – town)

1025-1991 Lenin who made the revolution died they renamed it after him – Leningrad

1992-nowdays Saint-Petersburg, when it was perestroika they didn’t like Lenin anymore

Arch of the General Staff Building - Arch of the General Staff Building

Arch of the General Staff Building - Arch of the General Staff Building

NICKNAMES

• City of Saint-Peter
• Peter
• Window into Europe
• Culture capital (since the capital was moved from Saint-Petersburg back to Moscow in 1918, after the Bolsheviks revolution)
• Northern Venice (due to the numerous rivers and canals, Peter the Great wanted to make it like Amsterdam)
• The Northern Capital (you already know why it is difficult to forget that you have been the capital)
• The Northern Palmira – it was made to protect the place from Swedes, for Russians to stay in this area forever and to have business with different countries, for merchants to come and to go out of Russian – as the way in and out the Russian – through the sea next to which it is located.
• The city of 3 revolutions – as soon as here was the capital from 1712 till 1918 all 3 Russian revolutions took place here. Bloody Sunday in 1905, the bourgeois revolution in February of 1917 and Bolsheviks revolution in October of 1917.
• City of Lenin (when it was Soviet time)
• Petropolis – in a Greek manner, like an antique city
• The city on the Neva (our main river is Neva and it is highly respected, a lot of things and some people were named after it, for example our main street Nevsky prospect, then the Patron Saint of the city our Saint Prince Alexander Nevsky – who lived in the 13^th century and was fighting Swedes on the river Neva.
• The city of white nights – one of the most beautiful things here – is time of white nights, when in the beginning of summer, the sky is almost not getting dark in the night. Of course they have white night in Murmansk and Finland, but it this places they don’t have some and architecture. So it looks really beautiful. It is the northernmost metropolis in the world.
• The open air museum
• The city of draw bridges – on of the main attraction in warm period of year, when navigation is on is a regular raising of the bridges in the night. This is the tour which I can also deliver. Such night tour starts usually at midnight, at 1.10 a.m. we watch raising of the most interesting Palace bridge, then in about 10 minutes we are next to the other bridge to watch its raising, then one more and one more. So by 2 or 2.30 in the morning we have seen 3 or 4 raising and are ready to finish.