St Petersburg

Looking across the wide Neva from Vasilyevsky Island, the Palace Embankment shimmers in the river, suspended between water and sky. Raised on a marsh by violence and sheer force of will, there are few cities more impossible, and more beautiful, than St Petersburg. It’s worth going for the view alone, and you should — now, while the rouble is weak.

Thrown up in only 50 years in the 1700s, St Petersburg is a vast stage-set upon which imperial society played at being European. Nowadays, you too can choose your role. Would-be Romanovs can take a box at the Mariinksy and spend one day at the Hermitage, and the next day out at Tsarskoye Selo and the Catherine Palace. Or, on the other hand, you can skulk like Raskolnikov down the back streets and canals, ducking into dive bars and checking out guitar bands.

There is plenty of underground, in both senses of the phrase. St Petersburg is the bohemian student to Moscow’s brash party animal, and the locals have a proud history of telling authority where to stick it. It’s no accident that the birthplace of the Russian Revolution is also the home city of Pussy Riot and Pyotr Pavlensky, the Putin-baiting performance artist who nailed his scrotum to Red Square.

So, when to go? Winters can be cold and summers humid, so May and June are best. The weather is warm and the streets are alive with light-hearted locals who have recently emerged from hibernation. Winter can, with luck, yield brilliant sunshine and clear blue skies, but you’ll have to hedge your bets.

This far north, summer nights consist of a couple of hours of purplish haze before dawn breaks again. Closing time is an alien concept, and with the city’s thriving bar culture (I recommend trying the buckwheat or lingon-berry vodka) it’s hard to know when to call it a night.