St Petersburg Jewish Tour

Meet your guide at the hotel lobby or by the cruise ship side. Start St Petersburg Jewish tour.

This driving tour combines conventional places of interest and Jewish history and culture sights. You will have stops and short walks in the most picturesque and significant places.

Inside visit with a tour to the Grand Choral Synagogue. You will learn the story of its construction as well as pages of history of the Jewish community in St. Petersburg.

Strictly speaking, there's no distinctly Jewish Quarter like in Amsterdam. But it happened so that a lot of Jewish families came to live in the area surrounding the Synagogue, and a lot of Jewish businesses were located there starting from mid-19th century. This part of the city is known as "Kolomna". You will take a walk and learn stories of people who used to live there.

There are several Jewish cultural and community centres in St. Petersburg that bring together Jewish families in different districts of St. Petersburg. Visiting such a centre one can find out more about everyday life of a Jewish family in St. Petersburg: education, careers, aspirations, family traditions, etc.

possible in a kosher restaurant/café

Visit the cultural treasury of Russia, one of the world's most famous museums. You will get to see the Winter Palace of the Russian kings and queens starting from Catherine the Great and view the highlights of West European art collections in the Small, Old and New Hermitage buildings.
OPTIONAL: upon request we can arrange a tour to the Hermitage Special Treasury, also known as “Gold Rooms”. Let us know early if you would like to have this tour – the reservation is to be done well in advance.

Drive outside the city to Pushkin (=Tsarskoye Selo).

This bronze stylized sculpture of a grieving man with his back hunched and shoulders drooping, was constructed in 1991 to commemorate eight hundred Jews who lived in Pushkin before WWII and were killed by the Nazis on the first days of occupation.

The lavish imperial palace at Tsarskoye was designed by Rastrelli in 1752 for Empress Elizabeth. She named it in honour of her mother, Catherine I. The most famous interiour that attracts crowds of visitors is the <Amber Room. The exact replica of the legendary Amber Room lost during WWII never fails to impress.

Alongside with Russian art you will have an introduction to life and works of such prominent Jewish artists as Antokolsky, Levitan, Shagall, Bakst and many others.