2 Best Sights in St. Petersburg, Russia

Erected on strictly classical lines between 1783 and 1789, the original building of the Russian Academy of Sciences is considered to be Giacomo Quarenghi's grandest design, with an eight-column portico, a pediment, and a double staircase. The administrative offices of the academy, founded in 1724 by Peter the Great, were transferred to Moscow in 1934 and the building now houses the St. Petersburg branch of the academy.

Tsar Alexander I founded this university in 1819, and today it's one of Russia's leading institutions of higher learning with an enrollment of more than 20,000. Russian president Vladimir Putin and Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev graduated from the university's law faculty. Much of the campus dates to the 18th-century reign of Peter the Great. The bright red baroque building on the right (if you're walking west along the embankment) is the Twelve Colleges Building, designed by Domenico Trezzini and completed in 1741. The next building in the university complex is the Rector's Wing, where a plaque attests that the great Russian poet Alexander Blok (d. 1921) was born here in 1880. The third building along the embankment is a former palace built for Peter II (1715–30), Peter the Great's grandson, who lived and ruled only briefly.