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Travel Guide » Europe » St. Petersburg

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St Petersburg

(Russia)

The grand dream of a Czar sits pretty on a swamp.

St Petersburg has been dubbed the Venice of the North for its palace-lined waterways. It managed to escape the architectural incursions of Stalinism and its grandiose relics of tsarist days are largely intact. Sculpted by islands and the sinuous Neva River, the city is a vista of geometric elegance.

Within this geometry is a dust-devil of influences and styles and a bewitching vortex of life's extremes. It's breathtakingly gorgeous, it's ruefully falling apart; it's viscerally sensual, it's crude and vulgar; its very essence gets under your skin, but remains forever outside your grasp.

Books

	A Traveller's History of the USSR and Russia (Peter Neville)

	This is quite a good read for a quick coverage of the nation, and it's good on pre-Gorbachev Russia.

	A History of Twentieth-Century Russia (Robert Service)

	An excellent history of the Soviet period from start to finish.

	Peter the Great: His Life and World (Robert K Massie)

	A great book on the history of St Petersburg's founder.

	Pushkin's Button (Serena Vitale)

	Absorbingly recounts the tale of the writer/poet's fatal duel.

	St Petersburg: A Cultural History (Solomon Volkov)

	The most comprehensive book available on St Petersburg's contribution to the world of art.

	Between Heaven and Hell: The Story of a Thousand Years of Artistic Life in Russia (W Bruce Lincoln)

	A fascinating in-depth history of arts and artists in Russia, ranging from religious icons to Soviet film makers.

	Women's Glasnost vs Naglost (Tatyana Mamonova)

	Combines essays by this leader of the Russian women's movement with interviews from a cross-section of women in a country where wife-beating and abortion have reached horrific levels.

	St Petersburg: Russia's Window to the Future, the first three centuries (Arthur and Elena George)

	This fascinating study of the creation and development of St Petersburg by one time residents the Georges is a brilliant and absorbing read.