Three-day private tour of St. Petersburg

On this three-hour tour of the historic centre, your guide will introduce you not only to St. Petersburg's most famous landmarks, but also the city's rich history and culture. The tour takes in the main sights of Nevsky Prospekt and the Neva River embankments, including the Winter Palace and St. Isaac's Cathedral. The tour culminates with an inside visit to the Peter and Paul Fortress, the magnificent island fortress founded by Peter the Great, the highlight of which is the stunning Ss Peter and Paul Cathedral, the final resting place of nearly all the Romanov Tsars and their families.

The Yusupov Palace on the Moyka River belonged to two of the most powerful noble families in Imperial Russia in the 18th and 19th centuries, the Shuvalovs and then the Yusupovs. Unremarkable from the outside, its palatial interiors are some of the best preserved in St. Petersburg, and the building is perhaps most famous as the site of the assassination of Grigory Rasputin, which is the subject of an extremely popular exhibition in the palace's basement.

After meeting their guide in the morning, the group will be taken by car or bus to the suburban estate at Tsarskoye Selo.

A grand rococo palace that, like the Winter Palace, was designed by Francesco Bartolomeo Rastrelli for Empress Elizabeth, the Catherine Palace at Tsarskoye Selo was used as the main summer residence of the Russian court under Catherine the Great. Famous throughout the world as one of great palaces of European royalty. The highlight of the tour is the Amber Room, an extraordinarily ornate chamber originally gifted to Peter the Great by King Frederick William I of Prussia.

The group then transfers west to the park and palace at Peterhof.

Founded as a royal residence to rival Versailles by Peter the Great, the park at Peterhof are among the world's most famous landscape gardens. This tour covers the more formal Upper Gardens and the extensive Lower Park, which includes several beautiful baroque palaces and pavilions, as well as the world-famous fountains. There will be time to have lunch at one of the cafes in the park.

You will be returned to St. Petersburg by bus in plenty of time to enjoy a visit to the ballet or any other evening entertainment you wish.

St. Petersburg's most popular visitor attraction, and rated among the top five greatest museums in the world, the Hermitage boasts vast collections of art and historical artifacts. This tour can provide only an overview of the treasures on display, but does give visitors the chance to see the spectacularly ornate state rooms of the Winter Palace, as well as masterpieces of the collection of Western European art by Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Rubens, Rembrandt, Caravaggio and Poussin, among others. The tour continues across Palace Square in the General Staff Building, the new home to what many consider the true highlights of the Hermitage's art collections, the works of the impressionists and post-impressionists, including Matisse, Monet, Gaugin and Picasso.

One of the most popular parts of any summer itinerary, this hour-long boat trip cruises the central rivers and canals of St. Petersburg and is a great way to see the city from a different angle, including the palace-lined embankments of the Fontanka and Moyka Rivers, and the famous bascule bridges along the Neva River, as well as new vistas on the Winter Palace and the Peter and Paul Fortress.