St Petersburg was built on the grandest possible scale and it’s changed little in the intervening three centuries, says Ross Young. Don’t expect narrow side streets – this is a city of wide boulevards, vast squares and perfectly-realised proportions.

Breathtaking in its scale, stunning in its architecture, and home to some of the finest collections of art anywhere in the world, St Petersburg truly deserves its status as one of Europe’s finest cities.

But 300 years ago it barely existed – Peter the Great’s most enduring legacy, his new Russian capital that would be both a window on the West and proof that Russia could match and improve upon anything in Europe, only dates back to 1703.

Never one to do things by halves, Peter had a vast area of swampland drained to fulfil his vision, before drafting in an army of Europe’s finest craftsmen and designers to help him build the world’s most northerly city, just 800 kilometres south of the Arctic Circle. St Petersburg is still resplendent after the facelift it received in preparation for its 300th anniversary celebrations in 2003.

As much as Rome, Paris or Venice, this is a city that oozes romance. It spans over a hundred islands, linking either side of the mighty River Neva with hundreds of bridges. Visit in winter and yes, it will be perishingly cold and you’ll have to contend with short days and long nights. But come prepared and you’ll find this great city of snowy streets and ice-covered canals refreshingly free of tourists. Come in summer and you can promenade along those same canals by daylight until two or three in the morning, thanks to St Petersburg’s northerly latitude. Just make sure that you don’t get caught out by the late-night raising of the bridges if your perambulations take you across

the Neva. You might find yourself marooned for a

few hours.

Perhaps the most striking feature of St Petersburg (or Piter, as locals call it) is the degree of its perfection. Peter the Great wooed its architects with more than the simple promise of wealth: he was able to offer them the chance to achieve a degree of immortality through their work. With no settlement on the site to compromise their designs, St Petersburg was built on the grandest possible scale. It’s changed little in the intervening three centuries. Don’t visit expecting to wander down narrow side streets – this is a city of

wide boulevards, vast squares and perfectly-realised proportions.

Most visitors to St Petersburg kick off their tours with a visit to the State Hermitage, and rightly so.

The Winter Palace, home to Russia’s rulers from its completion in 1762 until the revolution of 1917, houses a staggering collection of art. With an estimated three million works in the collection it’s hardly surprising that less than 10 per cent of them can be displayed at any one time. Highlights you can bank on seeing include a vast array of works by the Impressionists and the world’s largest collection of Rembrandts. But even without the art the Winter Palace itself would still be a thing of wonder. To see it at its best, approach from Palace Square, on the far side from the Neva – and consider as you do so that you’re crossing one of the great theatres of Russian history. This was the scene of Bloody Sunday in the abortive 1905 Revolution, and it was from here that the Winter Palace was stormed as the 1917 Revolution brought to an end the era of the Tsars and Tsarinas.

The city’s oldest building, the Peter and Paul fortress, dominates the opposite side of the Neva. Built in just seven months in 1703, its ornate Baroque cathedral houses the graves of Peter the Great and most of his fellow Tsars. Elsewhere in the grounds, the former jail, now a museum, is a monument to their excesses. Until 1917 it played host to some of Russia’s most famous political prisoners – as a list of celebrity dissidents, a roll-call featuring Dostoevsky, Gorky, Trotsky and Lenin’s older brother Alexander is hard to beat.

Echoes of Peter the Great are unavoidable even if you venture beyond the confines of the city. The most popular destination for a boat trip is his staggering summer palace, Petrodvorets (also known as Petergof), a transparent attempt to outdo Versailles in both scale and opulence. The Grand Cascade, just below the palace, is the centrepiece of the gardens and the name doesn’t begin to do it justice. More than 150 fountains, operating in unison, frame the views down to the Gulf of Finland. Beyond them the palace gardens are vast and impeccably maintained.

You shouldn’t leave St Petersburg without getting a feeling for its people, and for that there’s only one place to start: Nevsky Prospect, the most famous street in the city and arguably in Russia itself. As well as being the city’s main shopping drag – think of it as a Russian take on the Champs Elysees – Nevsky is a barometer for the creeping westernisation of Russia. Twenty years ago the major western brands had no foothold here, but today it’s well on the way to becoming as glamorous (and expensive!) a place to shop as it was in its heyday a century ago. But shopping’s not all it has to offer: it’s an ideal place to witness those little cameos of life that make a city so much more than the mere sum of its architectural and artistic parts. Here, dolled-up, mini-skirted girls teeter along the pavements on impossibly high heels, propped up by husbands and boyfriends, while sputtering wrecks from Communist times share the road with intimidating Mercedes with blacked-out windows.

Nevsky is the better part of five kilometres, so it provides a great option to try your hand at public transport Russian style. A cheap and efficient metro network runs hundreds of feet below ground, and some of the stations on the red line in particular are lavishly decorated – so much so that they might worm their way on to your list of the city’s highlights. Above ground the trams are also full of character and characters. And then there’s travelling by taxi. Any car in St Petersburg qualifies as a taxi, not just the official metered cabs, and it is accepted practice for a resident with a car and some time on his hands to scour the streets in search of a fare. Whatever you hail, give it a good once-over before you get in. It was only after one of my cabs set off that I noticed a hole the size of a small football had rusted away one of the doors.

Fortunately, St Petersburg’s hotels are in a far better state of repair. Fans of Sixties spy thrillers, aficionados of Communist-era concrete monstrosities and those on a tighter budget might fancy staying at the Moskva Hotel, with its prime location overlooking the Neva from Alexander Nevsky Square. Treat yourself to a tour of the building – on each identical floor, stern-faced babushkas guard the corridors, which are well over a hundred metres long. But if you want to make your break truly special, there’s only one place to stay. The Grand Hotel Europe’s art deco design makes a visit to its bar worth considering, even if you can’t afford the five-star prices for its rooms.

Finally, a word on safety. Like any other major city, St Petersburg has its dodgier areas and tourists can be a target for muggers. Enchanting as it is, make sure you exercise the same degree of caution that you would at home, and the city will reward you with a break that will linger long in the memory.

* pictures supplied by AA World Travel