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Marble Palace
Between Mars Field and the Neva, the Marble Palace is an architectural gem by Antonio Rinaldi, who used 36 kinds of marble and took pains to make them bleed seamlessly into one another. It was built between 1768 and 1785 as a gift from Catherine the Great to Grigory Orlov for suppressing a Moscow rebellion.
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Mariinsky Theatre
The pretty green and white Mariinsky Theatre has played a pivotal role in Russian ballet ever since it was built in 1859. Outside performance times you can usually wander into the theatre's foyer and maybe peep into its lovely auditorium. To organise a full tour, fax a request to Dr Yury Schwartzkopf and call for an answer.
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Mars Field
Once the scene of 19th-century military parades, the grassy Mars Field lies immediately east of the Summer Garden (south of Troitsky most). Formerly known as the Tsarina's Meadow (Tsaritsyn lug), it's a popular spot for strollers. At its centre, an eternal flame burns for the victims of the 1917 revolution and the ensuing civil war. Don't take a short cut across the grass - you may be walking on the graves of the victims or of later communist luminaries also buried here.
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Mendeleev Museum
This is also where Dmitry Mendeleev invented the periodic table of elements. His cosy study has been lovingly preserved and you can see his desk (where he always stood rather than sat) and some early drafts of the periodic table.
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Menshikov Palace
The first stone building in the city, the Menshikov Palace was built to the grandiose tastes of Prince Alexander Menshikov, Peter the Great's closest friend and the first governor of St Petersburg. Menshikov was of humble origins (he is said to have sold pies on the streets of Moscow as a child), but his talent for both organisation and intrigue made him the second-most important person in the Russian Empire by the time of Peter's death in 1725.
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Mikhailovsky Castle (Engineer's Castle)
A much greater Summer Palace used to stand at the south end of the Summer Garden. But Rastrelli's fairy-tale wooden creation for Empress Elizabeth was knocked down in the 1790s to make way for the bulky Mikhailovsky Castle. The son of Catherine the Great, Tsar Paul I, was born in the wooden palace and he wanted his own residence on the same spot. He had the current edifice built complete with defensive moat as he (quite rightly) feared assassination.
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Monument to the Heroic Defenders of Leningrad
Pl Pobedy (Victory Sq) is one of the first sights of the city that visitors see on the road from the airport to the city centre, making a deeply Soviet impression for a town as imperial as St Petersburg! The square now houses the vast Monument to the Heroic Defenders of Leningrad, which is the city's most moving monument. The front line was only 9km from this spot.
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Moscow Gates
About 4km south of Sennaya pl, the iron Triumphal Arch looks much like Berlin's Brandenburg Gate, though it is somewhat less than grand in its surroundings. The arch was built by Vasily Stasov in 1838 to mark victories over Turks, Persians and Poles. Demolished in 1936, it was rebuilt between 1959 and 1961.
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Mosque
This beautiful working mosque (1910-14), east of Alexandrovsky Park, was modelled on Samarkand's Gur Emir Mausoleum. Its fluted azure dome and minarets have emerged from a painstaking renovation and are stunning. It is not really open to the public: jamat (congregation) members are highly protective of their mosque, which is a serious place of worship and not a tourist attraction.
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Museum of Bread
This funky little museum pays tribute to 'our daily bread' and the role it has played in history (of the city and of the world). A model bakery exhibits the equipment that was used to make bread for the city's poorest classes in the 19th century. A special exhibition on the Siege of Leningrad offers an example of a daily ration of bread during WWII. The museum has been open since 1998, but hours of operation are sporadic, so it may be useful to call in advance.
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Museum of Decorative & Applied Arts
This splendid collection was begun in 1878 by Baron Stieglitz, who wanted to surround students of his School of Technical Design with inspirational works of art. The objects on display are breathtaking, from medieval handcrafted furniture to a rare collection of Russian tiled stoves, and works by the school's students.
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Museum of Erotica
It is odd enough that a museum should be housed in a venereal disease clinic. But even more surprising is the chief attraction of this quirky museum, which is a 30cm-long grey, embalmed penis that allegedly belonged to Rasputin. The chief of the prostate research centre of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, Igor Knyazkin, began assembling his collection of sexually themed trinkets his patients had given him over the years.
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Museum of Ethnography
In an impressive classical building on pl Iskusstv, this excellent museum displays the traditional crafts, customs and beliefs of more than 150 cultures that make up Russia's fragile ethnic mosaic. There's a bit of leftover Soviet propaganda going on here, but it's a marvellous collection: the sections on Transcaucasia and Central Asia are fascinating, with rugs and two full-size yurts (nomads' portable tent-houses).
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Museum of Political History
The 1904 Kshesinskaya Palace contains the Museum of Political History. Indeed, the building is political history - it was the headquarters of the Bolsheviks and Lenin often gave speeches from the balcony. The elegant Style Moderne palace had previously belonged to Mathilda Kshesinskaya, famous ballet dancer and one-time lover of Nicholas II in his pre-tsar days. It is worth a visit to see the house itself, as well as the best Soviet kitsch in town.
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Museum of Railway Technology
A huge treat for trainspotters lurks in a forgotten lot behind the former Warsaw Station (now a fancy shopping mall). This museum has a wonderful collection of Russian locomotives from the 19th and 20th centuries, including a dining carriage you can go into and some ancient steam engines. This is a fantastic option for kids.
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Museum of The Arctic & Antarctic
Inside the former Old Believers' Church of St Nicholas, this little museum is devoted to Soviet polar explorations. The self-proclaimed highlight of the museum is the 'polar philatelic collection' - a huge selection of postcards sent by various expeditions and stamps with polar themes. Apart from stuffed polar bears and the like, the most impressive exhibit is a wooden boat plane hanging from the ceiling.
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Museum of The Defence & Blockade Of Leningrad
This museum opened just three months after the blockade was lifted in January 1944 and boasted 37,000 exhibits, including real tanks and aeroplanes. But three years later, during Stalin's repression of the city, the museum was shut, its director shot, and most of the exhibits destroyed or redistributed. Not until 1985's glasnost was an attempt made to once again gather documents to reopen the museum; this happened in 1989.
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Museum of The History Of Political Police
In the very same building that housed the tsarist and the Bolshevik secret police offices, this small museum recounts the history of this controversial institution. An annexe of the Museum of Political History it includes one room that recreates the office of Felix Dzerzhinsky, founder of the Cheka (Bolshevik secret police). Each of the remaining three rooms is devoted to the secret police during a different period of history: the tsarist police, the Cheka and the KGB.
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Museum of The History Of Religion
Back in the day, it was called the Museum of Atheism and it was housed in the Kazan Cathedral. Now the name has changed, as has the location, but the exhibition remains. It describes the history of various world religions, including the Russian Orthodox Church.
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Museum of Zoology
One of the biggest and best of its kind in the world, the Museum of Zoology was founded in 1832 and has some amazing exhibits. Amid the dioramas and the tens of thousands of mounted beasts from around the globe, you'll also find a live insect zoo (a welcome diversion from all the dead animals). The highlight is unquestionably the 44,000-year-old woolly mammoth thawed out of the Siberian ice in 1902. Buy your ticket at the microscopic cashier window just west of the main entrance.
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Nabokov Museum
This lovely 19th-century town house was the suitably grand childhood home of Vladimir Nabokov, infamous author of Lolita and arguably the most versatile and least classifiable of modern Russian writers. Here Nabokov lived with his wealthy family from his birth in 1899 until the revolution in 1917, when they sensibly left the country. The house features heavily in Nabokov's autobiography Speak, Memory, in which he refers to it as a 'paradise lost'. Indeed, he never returned, dying abroad in 1977.
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Narva Gates
Just outside the Narvskaya metro station, the Narva Gates were built between 1827 and 1834 by Vasily Stasov as a tribute the defeat of Napoleon in 1812. Standing proudly at one of the city's old gates, this 12-columned monolith is crowned with an angel of victory and decorated with an assembly of valiant warriors.
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National Library of Russia
The lavish National Library of Russia takes up Ostrovsky square's west side. It is St Petersburg's biggest library, with some 31 million items, nearly a sixth of which are in foreign languages. Its reading rooms are open to the public, but you must bring your passport to sign in.
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New Exhibition Hall
This small, two-storey exhibition space is one of a few places in the city that are designated for contemporary art. Exhibitions change monthly, usually showcasing local artists, including some edgy, up-and-coming stuff, as well as more conventional works by influential 20th-century artists.
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New Holland
Except for one day in 2000 - when an exhibition of avant-garde art was held here - this island has been closed to the public for the nearly three centuries of its existence. The impressive red brick and granite arch, designed by Jean-Baptiste Vallin de la Mothe in the late 18th century, is one of the city's best examples of Russian classicism.
In Peter's time, the complex was used for ship-building (its name refers to the place where he learned the trade). In the 19th century, a large basin was built in the middle of the island.
