St Petersburg

Currency

Cash, brought with you, in euros or dollars. Foreign Visa and Mastercard do not work anywhere in Russia and have not since 2022. Change at a bank branch with your passport rather than at a kiosk, and keep the receipts — some banks ask for them when you change back.

ATMs & cards

No foreign card will work in any machine in the city. Budget the trip in cash before you leave home. Sberbank and VTB branches on Nevsky Prospekt will change euros and dollars during business hours.

Bring clean, recent euro or dollar notes; damaged ones are refused.

Wherever you are: if the machine offers to charge you in your home currency, decline. That is dynamic currency conversion and the rate is set by the ATM's operator, not your bank.

Safety

A safe city for street crime, walkable late, with the same national caveats that apply to the whole country: Western governments advise against travel, consular help is limited, insurance follows the advice, and the laws on "LGBT propaganda" and on discrediting the armed forces are enforced against visitors too. Pickpockets work Nevsky Prospekt in summer, which is the ordinary risk here.

Our own assessment, not a sourced index.

Entry & visa

Health & emergencies

Required to enter

No vaccinations are required for entry from Europe or North America.

Worth having

• Routine vaccinations up to date
• Tick-borne encephalitis if you will be in forest or countryside between spring and autumn — this is a genuine risk across Siberia and the Far East
• Hepatitis A
• Rabies for remote or long stays

Getting treated

State hospitals treat emergencies, and the standard varies enormously between Moscow and the regions. Private clinics in Moscow and St Petersburg are good and take cash. The complication is not medical: many Western insurers no longer cover travel to Russia at all, and card payment does not work, so a serious problem has to be paid for in cash or arranged from home.

Ticks in forest across Siberia and the Far East from May to July carry encephalitis, and the vaccination course takes weeks — start it early. Cold is the other one: −20°C is an ordinary winter day in Irkutsk and frostbite happens fast in wind. In Kamchatka the hazards are bears, volcanic ground and weather that strands people for days.

Orientation, not medical advice. Entry rules change and what you need depends on your own history and where you have been — check with a travel clinic or your national health service four to six weeks before you go.

Food tip

Eat where the students do on Rubinstein Street, which has more restaurants per metre than anywhere else in the country. Georgian and Central Asian food are the strengths; so is anything with smoked fish, and the pyshki — plain sugared doughnuts — from the Soviet-era counter on Bolshaya Konyushennaya.

Getting around

• Metro — deep, fast and among the deepest in the world; a single flat fare, paid with a Podorozhnik card
• Walking — the centre is one of the great walking cities, flat and laid out along the canals
• Boat — canal trips from May to October, and the way the city was designed to be seen
• Yandex Go — cheap taxis, though paying needs cash without a Russian card
• Getting in: no direct flights from the West; routes run via Istanbul, Dubai or Belgrade, or the train from Moscow

Must-see

Things to do

• Give the Hermitage a full day and still not finish it
• Walk the canals at 1am in June, when it never gets dark
• See the fountains switched on at Peterhof
• Watch the bridges lift over the Neva at night
• Go to the Mariinsky for opera or ballet
• Take the hydrofoil down the Gulf of Finland

Nearby day trips

Say a few words

Russian

• HelloЗдравствуйтеZDRAST-vooy-tye
• Hi (informal)Приветpri-VYET
• Please / you’re welcomeПожалуйстаpa-ZHAL-sta
• Thank youСпасибоspa-SEE-ba
• Yes / NoДа / Нетda / nyet
• Excuse meИзвинитеiz-vi-NEE-tye
• How much?Сколько стоит?SKOL-ka STO-eet
• I don’t understandЯ не понимаюya nye pa-ni-MA-yu
• Do you speak English?Вы говорите по-английски?vy ga-va-REE-tye pa an-GLEE-ski
• CheersЗа здоровьеza zda-ROV-ye
• GoodbyeДо свиданияda svi-DA-ni-ya

Learn the Cyrillic alphabet before you go — an hour of work, and it turns most street signs, menus and metro maps into words you can half-read, because so many are borrowed. English is common among younger people in Moscow and St Petersburg and rare elsewhere. Translation apps with offline Russian are worth downloading before arrival.

Religion

Russian Orthodox

The Orthodox church is woven into the state and into national identity, and church attendance rose sharply after 1991. Visitors are welcome: women cover their heads in a church, men take hats off, everyone stands — there are no pews — and nobody minds a quiet foreigner at the back. Islam is the second religion and the majority in Tatarstan, the North Caucasus and parts of the Volga; Buryatia around Lake Baikal is Buddhist, and its datsans are working monasteries rather than museums.

Do's and don'ts

Do

• Take your shoes off in someone’s home; slippers appear immediately
• Shake hands firmly, and only after you have both come inside — a handshake across a threshold is bad luck
• Give flowers in odd numbers. Even numbers are for funerals, and the rule is taken seriously
• Carry your passport and migration card; the police can ask and occasionally do
• Dress up for the theatre and the ballet, and leave your coat in the cloakroom — wearing it inside is not done

Don't

• Do not expect small talk or smiles from strangers; a neutral face in public is normal, not hostility
• Do not photograph military sites, airports or anything a sign forbids — this is enforced
• Do not discuss the war, and understand that the laws on "discrediting the armed forces" and on "LGBT propaganda" apply to visitors, in conversation and on your phone
• Do not refuse a toast at a table without a reason; refusing the third one, to the women present, is worse
• Do not put an empty bottle back on the table, which is a superstition everyone observes without explaining