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Northwest Federal District

Санкт-Петербург (Sankt-Peterburg)

There is only one city in the Northwest Federal District with over a million people, but that one, Санкт-Петербург (Sankt-Peterburg), has 4.88 million.1 It was founded as a forward capital of Russia at the mouth of the Neva River on the Gulf of Finland and rose to quick prominence.

UNESCO honors the historic center and 'related monuments' as a World Heritage Site. These include the Admiralty, the Winter Palace (1764), the Marble Palace, the Hermitage and the suburban residences of Petrodvorets, Lomonosov, Tsarskoie Selo, Pavlovsk and Gatchina.2 Later buildings of note are the Singer House (1904), the first steel structure in the nation; the Kunstkamera (1734); the Beloselsky-Belozersky Palace (1846); the Mariinsky Theater (1849) and the Grand Palace (1723). The tallest building as of early 2017 is the Tower Lider (459 feet, 2013).3 Tourists visit the Hermitage Museum, which includes six buildings including the Winter Palace.4

The city is served by Pulkovo Airport, one of the nation's busiest.5

The physicist and mathemetician, Daniel Bournoulli, wrote his Hydrodynamica while at the Санкт-Петербург (Sankt-Peterburg) Academy.

YearPopulationPolitical entity
1800 CE220,0006Rossiyskaya Imperiya (Russian Empire)
1900 CE1,439,0006Rossiyskaya Imperiya (Russian Empire)
2000 CE4,694,0007Rossiyskaya Federaciya (Russia)

Historical Maps

map showing what is now northwestern Rossiya but excluding Novgorod Oblast, 1800-1900 CE

map showing northwestern Rossiya, 2000 CE, with Sankt-Peterburg marked

External references

Winter Palace, Sankt-Peterburg, Northwest Federal District, Rossiya

Footnotes

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_and_towns_in_Russia_by_population, acc. Dec. 5, 2016. Another source puts the metropolitan area as somewhat smaller: a calculation for 2012 of 4.73 million (world-gazetteer.com, accessed February 6, 2013).
2. The list is from UNESCO, World Heritage Sites (Firefly Books, 2010).
3. Information about buildings is from emporis.com, accessed January 9, 2017. The Olgino Longwave Transmission (wired) Mast is 673 feet high and the Санкт-Петербург (Sankt-Peterburg) TV Tower reaches 1017 feet.
4. http://www.touropia.com/tourist-attractions-in-russia/, acc. Dec. 6, 2016.
5. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_busiest_airports_in_Russia, acc. Dec. 6, 2016: criteria: over 10M passengers.
6. Tertius Chandler, Four Thousand Years of Urban Growth, 2nd ed. (The Edwin Mellen Press, 1987), "Tables of the World's Largest Cities." In 1800 and 1900 it was the largest city in northwestern Россия (Rossiya). In 1900 it was the eighth most populous city in the world.
7. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Saint_Petersburg (acc. Dec. 5, 2016): The population of St.Petersburg in 1764–2003.