The City Layout

Vasilyevsky Island

One of the first areas of St. Petersburg to be developed because of its defendable position, Vasilyevsky Island forms the northwestern corner of the central city. Opposite the Admiralty and Winter Palace, at the island's eastern tip, is the remarkable architectural complex known as the Strelka (literally, "Pointer"), facing the bifurcation of the Neva. Behind the two great Rostral Columns, decorated by carved ships' prows, and across Pushkin Square, the point rises majestically to the former Exchange building (Thomas de Thomon, 1805-10), the city's finest example of early 19th-century style and reminiscent of a classical Greek temple in appearance; it now houses the Central Naval Museum.

Farther back, the Twelve Colleges building (Trezzini, 1722-42), originally intended to house the supreme governmental bodies of Peter the Great, is now the home of the city's state university. The building is divided into 12 identical but independent sections and runs at right angles to the Neva embankment, which is fronted at that point by the facades of the main building of the Academy of Sciences, the Menshikov Palace, and the Academy of Arts. On the far, or northern, side of the Exchange is the Customs House (now the literary museum and the Institute of Russian Literature known as Pushkin House), designed by Giovanni Luchini (1829-32).