The Winter Palace hosts the Hermitage art collection,one of the finest in the world.Credit:Getty Images
St Petersburg's been a dream for as long as I can remember,I tell the foursquare blonde at the Russian embassy as she checks my visa application,"Finally,I'm going. First time in Russia!""Interestink,"she says without raising her eyes,in a tone that suggests quite the opposite.
A fortnight later I'm on a train from Helsinki,hurtling through a blizzard. It takes about three hours to reach the famed St Petersburg-Finlyandsky Station. In April 1917,Lenin arrived there from Zurich,and the world changed.
Possibly he stepped out at the same platform. He certainly wouldn't have encountered the likes of my taxi driver,who blocks my path with an ursine solidity as I exit the station."Vear to?"he demands.
The Hotel Angleterre’s plush rooms with knockout views.
I offer the name of my hotel,which I've chosen for its proximity to the Hermitage Museum. He quotes me five times the going price,and I submit to the laws of the market. Where are you now,Lenin?
I drop my bags at the Hotel Angleterre,on St Isaac's Square opposite the imposing neoclassical cathedral after which it's named,and cut across the faded grandeur of Nevsky Prospect:old St Petersburg's main axis. Ahead sprawls the Winter Palace,resplendent in green,gold and white,home of the lavish Hermitage collection. My god,it's beautiful!
I've arrived on a rather auspicious day. The Red Army is out in force to commemorate January 27,1944,when Stalin's forces finally broke the 900-day Nazi siege of the city. Thousands of soldiers bearing red flags mass between the Winter Palace and the scimitar-shaped General Staff building opposite – the repository of the city's modernist collection.
Take in the opera in a box at the Mikhailovsky.Credit:Luke Slattery
I could leave St Petersburg at this moment in the knowledge that I've caught some essence of the city founded in 1703 by Peter the Great:the ghosts of tsars and bolsheviks swim before my eyes. Nor is Dostoevsky,one of my favourite writers,forgotten. Much of his psychological masterpiece,Crime and Punishment, is set in and around Nevsky Prospect.