Russian Museum, Summer Garden, Saint Michael's Castle and Fabergé

Between Nevsky Prospekt and the Palace Embankment of the Neva River, a green corridor of parks, royal palaces, and canals stretches north from Arts Square (Ploshchad Iskusstv) to the Summer Garden. Where the State Hermitage Museum focuses on Western European and ancient civilisations, this quarter preserves eight centuries of Russian visual art alongside Peter the Great's 1704 formal garden and nine Imperial Fabergé Easter eggs.

The State Russian Museum on Arts Square

Designed in the 1820s by Carlo Rossi as a unified neoclassical square, Arts Square is centred on Mikhail Anikushin's 1957 bronze statue of Alexander Pushkin and framed by the Grand Hotel Europe, the Saint Petersburg Philharmonia, the Mikhailovsky Theatre, and the yellow-and-white Mikhailovsky Palace. Built between 1819 and 1825 for Grand Duke Michael Pavlovich (younger brother of Emperors Alexander I and Nicholas I), the palace was purchased by the crown in 1895 under Emperor Nicholas II to establish the Russian Museum of Emperor Alexander III, which opened to the public in March 1898. Together with the adjoining Benois Wing (built 1914 to 1919 by Leonty Benois), its galleries trace Russian art chronologically from twelfth-century Novgorod and Andrei Rublev icons through Karl Bryullov's monumental The Last Day of Pompeii (1833), Ivan Aivazovsky's towering seascape The Ninth Wave (1850), Ilya Repin's Barge Haulers on the Volga (1873) and Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks, to early twentieth-century avant-garde canvases by Wassily Kandinsky, Marc Chagall, and Kazimir Malevich.

Saint Michael's Castle (Engineers' Castle)

Behind the Mikhailovsky Garden at the confluence of the Moika and Fontanka rivers stands Saint Michael's Castle, built between 1797 and 1801 by architects Vasily Bazhenov and Vincenzo Brenna for Emperor Paul I. Terrified of assassination inside the Winter Palace, Paul I ordered a water-moated fortress-palace with four different architectural facades and an octagonal interior courtyard, painted a warm pinkish-terracotta shade. Just forty days after moving into the completed residence, Paul I was assassinated in his bedroom by conspirators on the night of 23 March 1801. Handed over to the Main Engineering School in 1823 (where young Fyodor Dostoevsky studied military engineering), the castle now operates as a historic branch of the State Russian Museum.

The Summer Garden and Peter the Great's Summer Palace

Just north of Saint Michael's Castle, across the Moika River, lies the Summer Garden (Letny Sad), founded personally by Peter the Great in 1704 on a triangular island bordered by the Neva, the Fontanka, the Moika, and the Swan Canal. Modelled on European parterre gardens, its gravel walks are lined with wooden trellises, reconstructed eighteenth-century fountains, and copy casts of its original collection of ninety Venetian baroque marble sculptures (whose originals are preserved indoors at Saint Michael's Castle). At the north-eastern corner overlooking the Fontanka stands Peter the Great's two-storey Summer Palace, built between 1710 and 1714 by Domenico Trezzini, while the northern Neva frontage is enclosed by Yury Felten's celebrated cast-iron and pink granite fence (1771 to 1784).

The Fabergé Museum at Shuvalov Palace

Walking south along the Fontanka River embankment at number 21 brings visitors to the neoclassical Shuvalov Palace, restored and opened in November 2013 as the privately endowed Fabergé Museum. Within the Blue Room, glass display cases hold nine Imperial Easter Eggs crafted by the House of Peter Carl Fabergé between 1885 and 1916 for Emperors Alexander III and Nicholas II, including the first 1885 Hen Egg, the 1897 gold-and-enamel Imperial Coronation Egg containing a miniature replica of the royal coach, and the 1911 Fifteenth Anniversary Egg painted with miniature portraits by Vasily Zuiev. Check the official museum site to reserve timed audio-guide entry before continuing down the Fontanka toward the central canal districts.