Historic Centre of Saint Petersburg and Related Groups of Monuments

Peter the Great willed a capital out of Baltic marshland in 1703, and the city he began became Russia's window on Europe — canals threaded by more than 400 bridges, earning it the nickname Venice of the North. Baroque exuberance and neoclassical restraint stand side by side in the Winter Palace, the Admiralty and the Hermitage, while the later name Leningrad ties the city to the October Revolution. UNESCO inscribed the historic centre in 1990.