You see, St. Petersburg isn't the typical Russian city. It was built in the style of European cities, sculpted by Italian architects. Not one building was or is truly Russian. For you see, Peter the Great had traveled for several years, studying Europe, seeing what they built. He saw that Russia was several hundred years or more behind the rest of the world. So he changed that. He changed the style of dress, how men wore their beards,  their calender and even a few things in the Russian Orthodox Church.

 And he built the great city of St. Petersburg as his "window to Europe." Peter had millions of tons of red granite dragged to the marsh land, piles were driven and two undred thousand laboros died of sickness and malnutrition to built his mighty capital. The result: a mighty city for the rule of the Romanovs tsars.

It is called "The Venice of the North." That's because it has so many canals, since it was built on the 19 islands of the Neva Delta. It was the capital of Russia from 1703 to 1918. After the revoltion, the capital was moved to Moscow.

The city has many tsarist palaces that are still standing. There's the Winter, the Peterhof and the Anitchkov Palaces in the city, the Catherine and Alexander Palaces about 16 miles south of it. Another palace, Gatchina, was west of the city. The city was impressive, very beautiful, full of the cream of Imperial Russian society, that was until the revolution broke out in 1917. Russia was thrown into chaos and St. Petersburg, along with the rest of Russia, was under the rule of the communists.

St. Petersburg has had three different names in it's history. First called St. Petersburg, then it was changed to Petrograd during the first World War. They changed it because "St. Petersburg" was a German sounding name, so they changed it to a Russian name. Then after the Russian Revolution, it was named Leningrad, in honor of Vladimir Lenin, first dictator of Soviet Russia. Then after the Soviet collapse in the early '90s, it was once more changed back to St. Petersburg.