The Most Beautiful Places in Saint Petersburg
11 places · updated 14 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful places in Saint Petersburg are Bronze Horseman, Peterhof Grand Palace and Saint Isaac's Cathedral. The list covers 11 places. Last updated 14 October 2026.
Saint Petersburg was built on purpose: Peter the Great founded it in 1703 on the marshy delta of the Neva and made it the capital of an empire looking west. For two centuries Italian, French and Russian architects laid out granite embankments, canals and palace façades on a scale no older Russian city could match, and its northern latitude gives it the pale, nearly nightless summer evenings known as the White Nights.
The city began at the Peter and Paul Fortress, whose cathedral spire marks the tombs of the Romanov tsars. Across the river, the Winter Palace and its neighbours house the Hermitage, and Palace Square opens before them with the Alexander Column at its centre. Falconet's Bronze Horseman shows Peter rearing on a single granite boulder, and Saint Isaac's Cathedral lifts a gilded dome over the skyline. Rastrelli's blue-and-white Smolny Cathedral and the onion domes and mosaics of the Church of the Savior on Blood, raised where Alexander II was assassinated, show how far the city's styles range.
Beyond the centre lie the summer palaces. At Peterhof, the Grand Cascade sends fountains down from the palace terrace to a canal running to the Gulf of Finland. At Tsarskoye Selo, Rastrelli's Catherine Palace stretches its long blue façade, and on Kotlin Island the Naval Cathedral of Kronstadt rises over the base of the Baltic Fleet.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Bronze Horseman | Sculpture | |
| 2 | Peterhof Grand Palace | Palace | |
| 3 | Saint Isaac's Cathedral | Cathedral | ✓ |
| 4 | Catherine Palace, Tsarskoye Selo | Palace | ✓ |
| 5 | Peter and Paul Cathedral, Saint Petersburg | Cathedral | |
| 6 | Palace Square | Square | ✓ |
| 7 | Peter and Paul Fortress | Fort | ✓ |
| 8 | Smolny Cathedral | Cathedral | |
| 9 | Hermitage Museum | Museum | |
| 10 | Church of the Savior on Blood | Church building | |
| 11 | Naval Cathedral in Kronstadt | Cathedral |
01 Bronze Horseman
Russia · 0.8 km from Saint Petersburg59.937° N 30.302° E
Godot13 · CC BY-SA 4.0 The Bronze Horseman is the equestrian statue of Peter the Great that has stood in Senate Square in Saint Petersburg since 1782, and it has become the emblem of the city.
Did you know? The transport of the stone was devised by Marinos Carburis, a Greek officer from Kefalonia who had trained as an engineer in Vienna.
02 Peterhof Grand Palace
Russia · 37.2 km from Gatchina59.885° N 29.909° E
Image by rperucho from Pixabay The Grand Palace at Peterhof is the long golden-and-cream façade that crowns the terrace above the Grand Cascade, looking down the Sea Channel towards the Gulf of Finland.
Did you know? For the Chinese cabinets, lacquer screens brought to Russia under Peter the Great were sawn lengthwise so that both painted faces could be used.
03 Saint Isaac's Cathedral
Russia · 0.9 km from Saint Petersburg59.934° N 30.306° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Florstein ( Telegram: WikiPhoto.Space ) · CC BY-SA 4.0 5 metres over the square that bears its name, and on a clear day it is the reference point for half of central Saint Petersburg. The building is the fourth church on the site, commissioned by Alexander I and entrusted to Auguste de Montferrand, a French-born architect trained in the studio of Charles Percier.
Did you know? Once the rigging was ready, hoisting a single 114-tonne portico column into place took only about 40 to 45 minutes.
04 Catherine Palace, Tsarskoye Selo
Russia · 25.5 km from Saint Petersburg59.716° N 30.396° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Игорь Гордеев · CC BY-SA 4.0 The Catherine Palace is the Russian Baroque at its most exuberant: a facade some 300 metres long, painted sky blue, lined with snow-white columns and pilasters, and crowned with gilded ornament on which almost 100 kg of gold was spent.
Did you know? The empress's bedroom was decorated with Wedgwood jasperware reliefs designed by John Flaxman and George Stubbs.
05 Peter and Paul Cathedral, Saint Petersburg
Russia · 1 km from Saint Petersburg59.950° N 30.317° E
Image by LuidmilaKot from Pixabay The gilded needle that rises over the Neva from Hare Island belongs to the first stone church of Saint Petersburg.
06 Palace Square
Russia · 0.2 km from Saint Petersburg59.939° N 30.315° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
W. Bulach · CC BY-SA 4.0 Palace Square is where St Petersburg performed its role as imperial capital, and later where that empire came apart. The square takes its name from the Winter Palace, the Baroque residence of the tsars rebuilt between 1754 and 1762 in white and turquoise, which fills its northern side.
Did you know? In July 1924 the square hosted a game of living chess, with Red Army soldiers as the white pieces and sailors as the black.
07 Peter and Paul Fortress
Russia · 1 km from Saint Petersburg59.950° N 30.317° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by OlgaSadrova from Pixabay Saint Petersburg began here. On 27 May 1703 (16 May Old Style) Peter the Great founded a fortress on Hare Island on the Neva, and the city counts its birthday from that day. The earthen defences were soon replaced in stone to designs by the Swiss-Italian architect Domenico Trezzini, and work went on from 1706 to 1740.
Did you know? Other prisoners included the Decembrists, the writer Alexander Radishchev, Maxim Gorky and Lenin's elder brother Alexander Ulyanov.
08 Smolny Cathedral
Russia · 4.6 km from Saint Petersburg59.949° N 30.396° E
Image by DEZALB from Pixabay Sky-blue walls, white columns and a cluster of five domes make Smolny Cathedral one of the most theatrical buildings in Saint Petersburg.
Did you know? Rastrelli's large wooden model of the whole convent survives in the museum of the Academy of Arts.
09 Hermitage Museum
Russia · 0.1 km from Saint Petersburg59.941° N 30.314° E
Image by dron19 from Pixabay The State Hermitage began as a private indulgence.
Did you know? Recent research suggests the Tauride Venus is an original Hellenistic Greek sculpture rather than a later Roman copy, as long assumed.
10 Church of the Savior on Blood
Russia · 0.8 km from Saint Petersburg59.940° N 30.329° E
AndreyWi · CC BY-SA 3.0 The Church of the Savior on Blood marks the exact spot on the Griboedov Canal embankment where Alexander II was fatally wounded by a bomb thrown by a member of the Narodnaya Volya revolutionary group in March 1881.
Did you know? The central dome rises to 81 metres, and the church was designed to hold up to 1,600 people.
11 Naval Cathedral in Kronstadt
Russia · 30.5 km from Saint Petersburg59.992° N 29.778° E
Florstein ( Telegram: WikiPhoto.Space ) · CC BY-SA 4.0 The Naval Cathedral of Saint Nicholas in Kronstadt was built as the principal church of the Russian Navy and a memorial to all seamen lost at sea. 6 metres above the ground.
Did you know? Before construction began, the Kosyakov brothers produced an album of nearly a thousand drawings detailing the structure, exterior and interior of the cathedral.
How this list is ranked
Places are chosen for how they look, not for how famous they are: each one has its own description and a photograph credited to its author. The order is a single world ranking that weighs the beauty of the place in curated photography together with how widely it is documented — the number of language editions of its encyclopedia article and how often that article is read in a year. The list is rebuilt as places are added, so the order and the counts on this page are always current.
Questions people ask
- What are the most beautiful places in Saint Petersburg?
- On our list, Bronze Horseman ranks first, followed by Peterhof Grand Palace and Saint Isaac's Cathedral.
- When was Saint Petersburg founded?
- Peter the Great founded the city in May 1703, beginning with the Peter and Paul Fortress on Hare Island in the Neva delta; it served as Russia's capital for most of the next two centuries.
- Why is it called the Church of the Savior on Blood?
- It stands on the spot where Emperor Alexander II was fatally wounded in 1881, and was built by his son Alexander III as a memorial.
- What are the White Nights?
- Around the summer solstice, Saint Petersburg lies far enough north that the sun dips only briefly below the horizon and the sky never grows fully dark.
- What kinds of places are there to see in Saint Petersburg?
- In our collection, the places in Saint Petersburg are most often cathedrals (4), churches (2), palaces (2) and museums (2).
- How many places are on this list in Saint Petersburg?
- The list covers 11 places.