“Step onto Nevsky Prospekt, and you step into a fairground!” said Nikolai Gogol. If Peter the Great intended St Petersburg to be the greatest city in Europe, then Nevsky Prospect is its shop window – the gigantic broad avenue that bisects the city-centre. Nevsky Prospect was where Peter’s city laid out its credentials for “ships of every flag” to judge them – astounding palaces of the nobility designed by Europe’s leading architects; hotels which were the last word in modern luxury; cathedrals which subordinated holy worship to patriotic pride; restaurants which brought Paris’s finest cuisine to the Northern capital; waterways Canaletto would have envied; and such marvellous, enticing, dazzling, wonderful shops. Join us as we stroll down the central avenue of the Russian Empire to sample the unique Petersburg amalgam of the dramatic, the divine, and the dazzling!Licenses:Photo Singer House SPB 01.jpg, by Florstein, is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.5