The best museums Saint-Petersburg (Санкт-Петербург)

Built in the mid-18th century, the Sheremetiev Palace stretches its baroque façade along the Fontanka canal. The museum will delight music lovers of all stripes. It is indeed dedicated to musical instruments (some 3,000 pieces on display!) and retraces the musical culture of Saint Petersburg from the 18th to the beginning of the 20th century. Concerts are regularly given in the restored rooms.

On the ground floor, a large part of the instruments are on display. Dating back several centuries, they are often strange and amusing, to say the least. Glass harmonica, pocket violins, lyre-shaped guitars... you sometimes observe some of them for a long time before understanding how they work. You will notice the set of 18th century horns, each of which produces only one sound, audible at more than 7 km !

Upstairs, you will pass through a string of beautifully restored rooms decorated with musical instruments. At the end of the row are a few pianos, "working tools" and personal effects that belonged to great composers such as Shostakovich, Glinka, Rimsky-Korsakov and Rubinstein. Some rooms display the magnificent stage costumes, which belonged to the legendary Fedor Shalyapin, the most famous Russian opera singer, and photos of famous Russian female singers. There are also works on the theme of music and the performing arts by great names in the pictorial arts such as Casimir Malevich and Ilia Repin.

Anna Akhmatova lived in this outbuilding of the Sheremetyev Palace between 1924 and 1952. It was a princely setting that she would not abandon until the Second World War. This beautiful apartment became a communal one during the Soviet era, and Akhmatova was relegated to a small room. Hunted by microphones, watched over by guards posted every morning under her windows, she nevertheless continues to write. When she receives her friends, she gives them her poems while conducting a most harmless conversation. As soon as they have learned them by heart, she burns her verses in an ashtray that you can still see, so that there is no trace of them. She lived in this apartment with two of her three husbands, the poet Shileiko and the painter Pounin.

In 1989, this museum-apartment opened, and today you can visit the poetess' bedroom and study, which have been completely reconstructed. Numerous objects from her daily life, family albums, portraits are on display, as well as a collection of rare books gathered by the bibliophile M. Lesman, and the poet Brodski's library. One room contains photographs of Russian intellectuals who were victims of the Stalinist period. Exile or death often form their tragic destiny.

Don't miss the documentary on the ground floor. Even if you don't understand Russian, you will remember the very inspired reading of her poems and the moving images of her funeral, attended by thousands of people.

The "Junost" Sports Center is a museum located in Saint Petersburg.

It was in the greenery of the small island of Yelagin, then isolated in the far north of St. Petersburg, that the imperial family liked to retreat, in this neoclassical-style palace whose construction was entrusted to Carlo Rossi, one of the great architects of St. Petersburg, in the first third of the 19th century. Both near and far from the centre of the new capital, Yelagin Island was the ideal location for imperial receptions. They were held in the luxurious halls on the ground floor where you can admire today furniture and works of art dating from the first half of the 19th century. The museum's collections are also rich in porcelain, glassware, furniture, fabrics, goldsmith's and woodwork from the late 18th to early 20th centuries. Unfortunately today the aсcès in the Palace is impossible due to renovation work, but the whole park, which is listed as a UNESCO cultural heritage site, is still worth a detour. The Glass Museum (more than 700 glass and crystal works of art) as well as temporary exhibitions in the former stable hall do welcome visitors. As for the park itself, it is impeccably maintained. It is adorned with sublime golden colours in autumn. On sunny days, it is a spot that lends itself particularly well to small family or couple picnics, as well as walks with a taste for time travel.

In 1971, on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of his birth, this museum dedicated to the great Russian writer was opened in the last of the many apartments where he lived in St. Petersburg. From 1878 until his death in 1881, Fedor Dostoyevsky lived at No. 5 of this alleyway, not far from the beautiful Church of the Icon of Vladimir, in the heart of a district where he set the scene for many of his novels. It was here that he wrote his Diary of a Writer and finished The Brothers Karamazov, amidst the few personal objects, books, manuscripts, trinkets collected in part by his descendants, which made it possible to reconstruct the modest and austere environment of the brilliant writer. The museum exhibits the writer's complete works, published during his lifetime, as well as books and photos bearing his dedications. It organizes international symposia and seminars dedicated to Dostoyevsky's work.

Yet it is not in this apartment that you will be able to find the most revealing clues to Dostoyevsky's personality; the author could not allow himself to be locked up in a museum, just as he could not allow himself to be locked up in the walls of an apartment during his lifetime. It is true that it is at this address that he ended his days, but isn't the only Dostoyevskian place, his real museum, rather the city of Saint Petersburg itself, whose hidden side he has worked hard to explore, far from the carelessness and splendour of the palaces?

Welcome to the paradise of grown-ups, geeks and nostalgic for the USSR! This playful museum is an Ali Baba's cave dedicated to Soviet arcade games created between 1974 and 1991. Some 50 different games are gathered together and made available to the visitors-players. The idea is that the visitor becomes a gamer and can therefore switch from one machine to another as in a large games room. Love at first sight guaranteed!

Russia's first museum of architectural ceramics opened in October 2018 inside the famous Peter and Paul Fortress. It contains some 300 objects used for construction and interior decoration, from the 18th to the beginning of the 20th century. There will be beautiful fragments of facades of St. Petersburg buildings, rare Dutch tiles, old chimneys and other pieces of the city's history and architectural heritage.