- St Petersburg’s Hermitage museum is home to around 70 cats, which guard its treasures against rodents
- Subbotnik is the day when residents of Russian cities volunteer to sweep up and tidy the streets
- Touch the nose of the dog sculpture at the Ploshchad Revolutsii metro station – it’s good luck
- St. Petersburg has more songs written about it than any other Russian city
- Weighing more than 661 tons and standing more than 83 feet tall with a diameter of more than 11 feet, the Alexander Column in St. Petersburg is not attached to a base, but stands under its own weight
- No prisoner ever escaped from St. Petersburg’s Peter and Paul Fortress
- Michael’s Castle in St. Petersburg has four different architecture facades to fit in and keep the harmony with the four different streets it faces