Is the Dubai heat hitting you hard? Are you looking for an escape full of culture, architecture and gastronomical delights? Rhetorical questions, I know. Of course you are. At some point in July, every person in the Gulf starts mentally walking through an Italian piazza, eating gelato and pretending their inbox does not exist.

But allow me to suggest something slightly further north.

Enter Saint Petersburg, the so-called northern capital of Russia: a city built for long walks, dramatic skies, imperial façades and the very specific pleasure of wearing a jacket in summer without turning it into a personal sauna. It is grand, strange, poetic, occasionally absurd and endlessly beautiful — which is basically everything we ask from a city, a friend, and a holiday.

You can refresh your memory with our big guide here, but this time we are taking the hedonist route. Saint Petersburg isn't only where you go to stare at the architecture of old imperial Russia until your neck hurts. It is also where you eat very well, steam yourself back into humanity, sleep in rooms with historical drama, and touch art in almost every possible form — from the Hermitage, where you can spend years and still miss something, to contemporary galleries, literary museums and cultural clusters.

Fasten your seatbelts, ladies and gentlemen. We are getting started.

The State Hermitage Museum

Let's begin with the obvious, because sometimes the obvious is obvious for a reason. The State Hermitage Museum isn't just a museum. It is a small civilisation with ticket control.

Its main complex is located on Palace Square and stretches across several historic buildings, including the Winter Palace. The collection is enormous — the kind of enormous that makes you enter confidently and leave three hours later with a mild identity crisis and 47 photos of ceilings. Rembrandt, Leonardo da Vinci, antiquities, imperial interiors, paintings, sculpture, gold, diamonds — the Hermitage doesn't believe in doing things modestly.

Should you try to see everything in one visit? Absolutely not. That isn't a cultural plan; that is a psychological experiment. Choose a route, accept defeat gracefully, and leave something for your next trip.

The State Russian Museum

If the Hermitage is where you go for the grand global art history marathon, the State Russian Museum is where Russian art finally gets the stage to itself.

Founded by Emperor Nicholas II in 1895, the museum holds one of the world’s largest collections of Russian fine art, with works spanning from ancient icons to the avant-garde and contemporary movements. Its main venue, the Mikhailovsky Palace, already feels like a reason to visit, even before you start walking through rooms filled with icons, portraits, landscapes and dramatic brushwork.

The wider complex also includes St Michael’s Castle, the Marble Palace, Stroganov Palace, Mikhailovsky Garden and the Summer Garden. In other words, it isn't one stop. It is a full relationship.

New Holland Island

New Holland is one of those places that makes you say, “Ah, so this is what happens when someone takes urban regeneration seriously and also has taste.”

Founded in the early 18th century and long closed to the public, the island eventually reopened as a cultural and public space. Today it is part park, part cultural platform, part social magnet, part “let's just meet there and figure it out”.

There are restaurants, events, installations, shops, children’s spaces, seasonal programmes, summer lawns and winter ice skating. There are restored industrial buildings, landscaped paths, water, brick, trees, people with very good sunglasses and the feeling that you are inside a city, but also slightly outside it.

You will probably return more than once during your trip. Not a warning, just a prediction.

The “A Room and a Half” Museum

Saint Petersburg is a city of writers, poets and people who could turn minor inconvenience into a full metaphysical event. The “A Room and a Half” Museum, dedicated to Joseph Brodsky, is one of the most moving literary spaces in the city.

Located in the Muruzi House, in the communal apartment where Brodsky lived with his parents before his emigration in 1972, the museum is built around absence as much as presence. The memorial part preserves the atmosphere of the apartment, while the exhibition space tells the story of the poet’s life, exile and influences.

It is quiet, intimate and deeply Petersburgian. Go there when you want to feel cultured and slightly devastated, which is, frankly, the city’s default emotional setting.

Sevkabel Port

Sevkabel Port is another major cultural cluster, located on Vasilyevsky Island on the site of a former cable factory. Today it is a waterfront space with cafés, shops, markets, events, street art, a promenade and views over the Gulf of Finland.

It is less imperial drama, more industrial cool. Come here for events, food, open-air energy, markets, music, skating, sea air and that particular feeling of standing by the water and pretending your life is a beautifully edited short film.

OBERIU Museum

For those who like their literature slightly absurd, rebellious and allergic to common sense in the best possible way, the OBERIU Museum is a very Petersburg stop. Dedicated to the literary group OBERIU — the Association for Real Art — the museum honours Daniil Kharms, Alexander Vvedensky, Nikolai Zabolotsky and their circle, who rejected the neat logic of realism and offered a stranger, sharper, more paradoxical way of looking at the world.

The museum is located in the apartment on Syezzhinskaya Street, 37, where Vvedensky lived from 1914 to 1936. In April 2026 the museum launched its own collection exhibition, “Incomplete Collection”. Which, honestly, feels very appropriate: if any museum was allowed to be proudly incomplete, it had to be this one.

KUZNYAHOUSE

KUZNYAHOUSE is a restaurant, bar and music space on New Holland Island, and yes, we are back on New Holland already. I told you this would happen.

The project combines food, sound and city culture. The restaurant is built around long evenings, seasonal food, music, conversations and the general art of not rushing anywhere. The musical direction is curated by Kito Jempere. Yes, that Kito Jempere, whom you may also know as the Creative Director of The Sandy Times (and STR).

And then there is Cruise by Kuznyahouse, the team’s seasonal floating restaurant and nightlife project. It is part dinner, part summer ritual, part moving postcard: you board, eat, drink, listen to music, watch Saint Petersburg glide past, and suddenly the whole “northern capital” concept starts making perfect sense.

Casper

Casper is a contemporary European bistro on Kirochnaya Street. Expect seasonal comfort food, French-inspired sauces, minimalist interiors and a bar programme that understands the assignment.

The menu is built around precise technique rather than theatrical chaos: steak, tartare, pasta, sauces, proper textures, proper temperatures. Civilised, but not boring — our favourite category.

Café Benois

Café Benois is located inside the Russian Museum, in the Column Hall, which already sounds like a place where one should sit upright and make intelligent comments about composition.

The café offers a modern take on Russian cuisine, with dishes inspired by Russian artists. The idea is simple and very satisfying: you look at art, then you eat something that continues the conversation.

Pishcha Dinastii Min

Pishcha Dinastii Min — or “Ming Dynasty Food” — is located in the same Muruzi House as the Brodsky Museum, which makes it one of the more conceptually satisfying lunch decisions in the city.

The restaurant is inspired by Brodsky’s poem “Letters to the Ming Dynasty” and his love of Chinese food. Eat Peking duck, think about poetry, feel superior in a completely harmless way.

Harvest

Harvest is another strong argument in favour of Saint Petersburg’s restaurant scene — and, more specifically, in favour of vegetables having better PR than most people. The restaurant is built around seasonal produce, local ingredients and a respectful, almost suspiciously elegant approach to vegetables.

Harvest was also included in The World’s 50 Best Restaurants top 100 in 2019 — the only Saint Petersburg restaurant on the list at the time — so yes, this is one of those places where dinner can be both delicious and useful for your cultural self-esteem.

Shawarma, pyshki and other noble institutions

Saint Petersburg has countless shawarma spots, and you shouldn't be afraid to discover them by the calling of your heart. The most iconic is often considered the shawarma spot on Liteyny Prospekt, a cult local address known for its classic recipe and garlic sauce.

You can also explore Shawafel and other shawarma-and-falafel places around the city. The rule is simple: if it smells good and there is a small queue, you are probably safe.

After shawarma, you have to try pyshki on Bolshaya Konyushennaya Street — Soviet-style doughnuts dusted with sugar, served with coffee that tastes like a memory rather than a beverage. Tourists love it, locals still go, and your calorie tracker will absolutely regret the visit. But you won’t.

Grand Hotel Moika 22

Grand Hotel Moika 22 is located in a historic 1853 mansion opposite Palace Square and the Hermitage Museum. Which means that, depending on your room, you may wake up, look outside and immediately feel underdressed for your own life.

The hotel continues the tradition of European grand hospitality, with interiors full of antiques, paintings, engravings and references to imperial St Petersburg. Many rooms offer views of the Hermitage, the General Staff Building, the Moika River, the Capella and the Church of the Saviour on Spilled Blood. From the Bellevue restaurant on the ninth floor, the panorama of the historic centre is exactly the sort of thing that makes people say “just one more photo” 19 times.

Boutique Hotel Gymnasium No. 5

Boutique Hotel Gymnasium No. 5 is set in the former Fifth St Petersburg Gymnasium, a building with a highly respectable alumni list and the kind of history that makes modern interiors feel more interesting.

Vladimir Shukhov studied here. Mikhail Vrubel studied here. Other people of genius also passed through its corridors, which is slightly intimidating if your main achievement of the day is choosing breakfast. Still, that is the joy of Saint Petersburg: you can stay somewhere historic and pretend proximity to greatness counts as personal development.

Sands Rooms

Sands Rooms offers carefully restored apartments in the centre of the city, set in a 1911 building with high ceilings, mouldings, original brass window fittings and century-old oak parquet.

This is for travellers who want the city not only outside the window, but inside the room. It feels residential, elegant and a little cinematic.

Apartment No. 34

Apartment No. 34 sits literally above Joseph Brodsky’s “A Room and a Half”. From 1889 to 1892, it was rented by Dmitry Merezhkovsky and Zinaida Gippius, and today it is a new museum-related space created by architect Alexander Brodsky.

You can rent it and, for a while, feel like Brodsky’s neighbour. This is probably the most Saint Petersburg accommodation concept imaginable: part apartment, part literary footnote, part emotional trap.

Fonarnye Bani

Fonarnye Bani is one of the city’s most beautiful historic bathhouses, originally opened in the 19th century and restored with great attention to architectural detail.

This is where you go when walking, eating, thinking and staring at façades have finally taken their toll. There are traditional Russian steam rooms, hammams, plunge pools, treatments and the kind of atmosphere that makes sweating feel almost aristocratic.

You enter tired, you leave pink, philosophical and possibly hungry again.

Context Studio by Diana Vishneva

Another reason to go back to New Holland — and yes, this island is now basically a character in the story — is Context Studio by Diana Vishneva.

The studio is a cultural and dance space designed to make ballet and movement more approachable. It brings together classical ballet, contemporary dance, yoga and much more, welcoming both professionals and those who simply want to get closer to movement without necessarily becoming a swan by Thursday.

Luceo Spa

Luceo Spa is located in the courtyard of the historic Lion Palace building and offers a full spa experience across several levels. There are treatment rooms, massages, skincare, a gym, saunas, steam rooms and a relaxation pool under a glass roof.

The pool is more for floating beautifully than for athletic swimming, which is ideal, because we came for recovery, not Olympic ambition. With natural light, moonstone, warm water and calm interiors, it is the place to visit when you want to feel like your nervous system has finally stopped sending angry emails.

Saint Petersburg in summer is one of those cities that rewards wandering. You can plan, of course. You should plan. Museums need tickets, restaurants need bookings, and your legs need realistic expectations.

But the best parts will still happen between the plans. A courtyard you didn't expect. A bar you entered because it started raining. A gallery you barely understood but still loved. A bridge at night. A bowl of soup. A bathhouse. A long walk along the water. Another visit to New Holland, because apparently that is who we are now.

Come for the culture. Stay for the food. Recover in the banya. Repeat until your flight home begins to feel like a personal insult.