7 unusual sights in St Petersburg, Russia

St. Petersburg is known for numerous attractions, including imperial palaces, stately churches and picturesque parks. If you have already managed to take a selfie in front of famous monuments that you found out in the guidebook, we recommend you visiting the following unusual sights in St. Petersburg.

Kunstkamera

The Kunstkamera is the first public museum in Russia established by the emperor Peter the Great. Today it is known as the Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography.

The museum has a unique collection of antiquities, revealing the history and life of different nations. But many tourists know it for the “special” collection of anatomical rarities and anomalies. This section contains exhibits with anatomical deformities and various natural rarities, for example, a two-headed lamb or Siamese twins.

Udelnaya Flea Market

Not every resident of Russia has heard about the Udelnaya Market, although it is amongst the top famous flea markets in the world. The Forbes compares it with similar trading places in London, Paris and Tokyo. The Guardian includes the flea market in the must-see list.

Shopping stalls of Udelnaya flea market stretch back for 2 kilometres. You can buy everything here. For example, the antique working clock may coexist with broken toys and details of unknown mechanisms. But if you do not hurry and carefully look at the goods, you can buy quite decent things at a very low price. There is a real antique: old books and magazines, gramophone records, porcelain, paintings..

Street Art Museum

This museum is a unique territory of art combining a gallery space, street culture and functioning Laminated Plastics Factory. Its territory is divided into two zones: a permanent exhibition and a public platform, where temporary exhibitions and mass events take place. There is a permanent collection of monumental murals by modern street artists on the closed territory of the factory. A significant number of works are located inside the existing workshops. The company occupies almost 11 hectares of the industrial zone. According to rough estimates, it is about 200 thousand square meters of surface, which is given to the work of street artists from around the world.

Peacock Clock in Hermitage

A visit to the Hermitage is included in the program of different Private tours in St Petersburg, but not so many tourists know about this amazing exhibit. The Peacock Clock is an automatic machine of the workshop of the English mechanic James Cox and the master Frederick Urey. It was made in the UK, London in the 1770s. The uniqueness of this clock is that they are still in working condition. According to experts of the State Hermitage Museum, this is the only large automatic machine of the XVIII century which has reached our time without changes in the world. You can see them in action on Wednesday at 8 PM.

Russian Vodka Museum

If you want to know more about the most famous Russian drink, you should visit this museum. The collection contains antique bottles, corks, labels, documents, household utensils. The excursion includes a visit to the exhibition, telling about the history of the drink creation as well as a tasting of several varieties of vodka with traditional Russian snacks in a cosy Russian Vodkaroom №1 which takes you back to the imperial 19th century. You can also buy souvenirs in the bar. The collection of the restaurants consist of over 260 types of Russian Vodka.

Grand Maket Rossiya

Travelling around Russia is not so easy, but you can learn more about the daily life of its residents in Grand Maket Rossiya. The exposition of the museum is a 1:87 scale model, with an area of 800 square metres. It is the second-largest layout in the world.

The model presents an image of everyday life in Russia through a lot of mini-plots. Different situations demonstrate various types of human activity: work, leisure, sports, study, military service, country life, travel, mass celebrations and even an attempt to escape from the prison. Ground transportation is represented by cars, trucks, trams, buses, railway trains, samples of agricultural, construction and military equipment. You can start their movement on the layout with interactive buttons located along the perimeter of it.

Chizhik Puzhik

Monument of Chizhik Puzhik is easy to overlook. It is located on a small pedestal on the Fontanka River near the Saint Michael’s Castle. 11-centimetre monument in the form of siskin appeared thanks to the humorous Russian song, which was sung in the middle of the 19th century.

Chizhik-Pyzhik is popular attraction due to the sign that if you make a wish and get a coin into the pedestal on which the bird is standing, the wish will come true, but only if the coin remains lying on the stone. In good weather during the tourist season, you will see a long line of people who want to try their luck.

There is another tradition for the newlyweds: the bridegroom must get a glass of champagne tied by rope down to the monument and toast with the siskin’s beak without breaking it. This is the key to happiness for a young family.