Universitetskaya Embankment

Isaakievsky pontoon bridge (Saint Isaac's Bridge) was the first bridge across Neva river in St.Petersburg, by then the capital of Russian Empire. It was first constructed in 1727. Starting from 1732 it was rebuilt each summer for a period 184 years. The bridge was named after the nearby Saint Isaac's Cathedral. Between 1856 and 1912 construction was shifted to the spot of today's Palace Bridge. The gale of 1733 shattered the bridge, sinking the barques supporting it. After this the bridge was supported by special-design heavy-duty pontoons. In 1916 a passing tugboat sent a spark that caused a fire on the wooden structures and the bridge perished in flames. The former construction spot of the bridge is distinguished today by bank abutments fettled with granite steps leading down to the water.

The Menshikov Palace (Russian: Меншиковский дворец) is a Petrine Baroque edifice in Saint Petersburg, situated on Universitetskaya Embankment of the Bolshaya Neva on Vasilyevsky Island. It was the first stone building in the city. Since 1981, it has served as a public museum, a branch of the Hermitage Museum. The palace was founded in 1710 as a residence of Saint Petersburg Governor General Alexander Menshikov and built by Italian architects Giovanni Maria Fontana, and, later, German architect Gottfried Johann Schädel. It was opened in 1711, but the construction continued until 1727 (assisted by Domenico Trezzini, Bartolomeo Rastrelli, Georg Johann Mattarnovy and Jean-Baptiste Le Blond), when Menshikov with his family was exiled to Siberia and his property was confiscated. In 1731 the First Cadet Corps were established and occupied the palace and neighboring buildings. At the end of the 19th century the Menshikov Palace was restored and became the museum of the Corps. In 1924, its collections were moved to the Hermitage and other museums. From 1956 to 1981 the Menshikov Palace was restored again and finally opened to the public as a branch of the Hermitage Museum with a collection of Russian art of the late 17th-early 18th century.

The Twelve Collegia, or Twelve Colleges (Russian: Двeнaдцaть Коллегий), is the largest edifice from the Petrine era remaining in Saint Petersburg. It was designed by Domenico Trezzini and Theodor Schwertfeger and built from 1722 to 1744.

Saint Petersburg State University (Russian: СПбГУ, Санкт-Петербургский государственный университет), also known as St Petersburg University (SPbU), is a public research university based in Saint Petersburg, Russia. It is the oldest and one of the largest universities in Russia. Founded in 1724 by a decree of Peter the Great, the university from the very beginning has had a strong focus on fundamental research in science, engineering and humanities. It is made up of 24 specialized faculties (departments) and institutes, the Academic Gymnasium, the Medical College, the College of Physical Culture and Sports, Economics and Technology. The university has two primary campuses: one on Vasilievsky Island and the other one in Peterhof. During the Soviet period, it was known as Leningrad State University (Russian: Ленинградский государственный университет). It was renamed after Andrei Zhdanov in 1948 and was officially called "Leningrad State University, named after A. A. Zhdanov and Decorated with the Order of Lenin and the Order of the Red Banner of Labour". A. A. Zhdanov's was removed in 1989 and Leningrad in the name was officially replaced with Saint Petersburg in 1992, however, the mentions of being decorated with orders stayed for some time after that.

The Senate and Synod Building is the former headquarters of the Governing Senate and the Most Holy Synod of the Russian Empire in the Senate Square, Central St. Petersburg, Russia and the current headquarters of the Russian Constitutional Court and Boris Yeltsin Presidential Library.

Boris Yeltsin Presidential Library was established by Vladimir Putin and is one of the national Libraries in Russia. It is named after Boris Yeltsin. It is located in St. Petersburg in Russia. In November 2014, it announced its intention to start an online encyclopedia, which it dubbed an alternative to Wikipedia. In a statement, the Library said that Wikipedia "...is unable to give detailed and trustworthy information about Russia’s regions and the life of the country."

The Bronze Horseman (Russian: Медный всадник, literally "copper horseman") is an equestrian statue of Peter the Great in the Senate Square in Saint Petersburg, Russia. It was opened to the public on 7 (18) August 1782. Commissioned by Catherine the Great, it was created by the French sculptor Étienne Maurice Falconet. The name influenced a 1833 poem of the same name by Alexander Pushkin, which is widely considered one of the most significant works of Russian literature. The statue is now one of the symbols of Saint Petersburg. The statue's pedestal is the Thunder Stone, the largest stone ever moved by humans. The stone originally weighed about 1500 tonnes, but was carved down during transportation to its current size and weight of 1,250 tons.

The Asiatic Museum (Азиатский музей) in Saint Petersburg was one of the first museums of Asian art in Europe. Its existence spanned 112 years from 1818 to 1930 when it was incorporated into the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts of the Russian Academy of Sciences. In 1818, the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) learned that Jean-Baptiste Rousseau (1780–1831), the French consul at Aleppo and Tripoli (then both part of the Ottoman Empire), was selling his extensive collection of manuscripts written in the Arabic script. In November of that year, the president of the RAS, Count Sergey Uvarov, wrote to the Board of the RAS requesting that a separate room be put aside in the Academy's cabinet of curiosities for storing this collection of manuscripts (which was eventually purchased by the RAS in two tranches, in 1819 and 1825), as well as other medals, manuscripts and books of oriental origin already in the Museum of the Imperial Academy of Science. The result was the establishment of the Asiatic Museum (Russian: Азиатский музей) of the RAS, in Saint Petersburg. The Asiatic Museum quickly established itself as the main institute for the collection and study of oriental manuscripts and books in Russia, as well as a major international centre for oriental studies, and by the time of the Russian Revolution in 1917, almost a hundred years after its foundation, it housed one of the most extensive collections of oriental manuscripts and printed books in the world. Following the Russian Revolution, the Asiatic Museum continued under the same name until May 1930, when the Institute of Oriental Studies (IOS) of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR was founded, and the Asiatic Museum was incorporated into this new institute.

The Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation (Russian: Конституционный Суд Российской Федерации) is a high court within the judiciary of Russia which is empowered to rule on whether certain laws or presidential decrees are in fact contrary to the Constitution of Russia. Its objective is only to protect the Constitution (in Russian constitutional law this function is known as "constitutional control" or "constitutional supervision") and deal with a few kinds of disputes where it has original jurisdiction, whereas the highest court of appeal is the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation.

The 1988 fire in the Library of the USSR Academy of Sciences (now Library of the Russian Academy of Sciences) broke out on Sunday, February 14, 1988, in the newspaper section on the third floor of the library; the cause of which is still unknown. According to the library's acting director Valeriy Leonov, the fire alarm sounded at 8:13 pm, when the library was closed for visitors. By the time the fire was extinguished the following afternoon, it had destroyed 298,000 books of the total 12 million housed, two to three million more were damaged by heat and smoke. About 734,465 copies volumes initially became damp due to firefighting foam. Many of the lost volumes were part of the Baer Collection of foreign scientific works: 152,000 were lost. The rest 146,000 were Russian books.The lost fund was partially restored, large batches of books and individual rare editions came from more than 700 domestic libraries to replenish the lost funds.Many of the lost books were foreign scientific works.

The Library of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Russian: Библиотека Российской академии наук (БАН)) is a large state-owned Russian library based in Saint Petersburg on Vasilievsky Island and open to employees of institutions of the Russian Academy of Sciences and scholars with higher education. It is a part of the academy and includes, besides the central collection, the library collections housed by specialized academic institutions in Saint Petersburg and other cities. The library was founded in Saint Petersburg by a decree of Peter I in 1714 and subsequently included into the structure of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences. Since 1747 all academic institutions and since 1783 all publishers in the country have been legally obliged to provide the library with a free copy of each published item. In 1728-1924 its collections were stored in the building of Kunstkamera, with which it had formed a single academic institution until 1803. In the 1920s the library received many items confiscated during nationalization in Soviet Russia. In 1924-1925 the collections were transferred to the new building built for the library in 1914 and occupied by a military hospital during the First World War. During the siege of Leningrad in 1941-1944 the collections stayed in the besieged city and the library was open. On February 15, 1988, the library suffered the most catastrophic fire in its history which destroyed or damaged a considerable part of the collections,it had destroyed 298.000 books of the total 12 million housed,two to three million more were damaged by heat and smoke. 734,465 copies volumes initially became damp due to firefighting foam. Many of the lost volumes were part of the Baer Collection of foreign scientific works: 152.000 were lost. The rest 146.000 were Russian books, many of them early scientific and medical books from the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. The damp books damaged by fire extinguishment were initially frozen. Then a radio appeal was broadcast for citizens to dry the damp books in their homes. By late March 1988 93% of the damp books had been dried in that way and returned to the library. However, about 10,000 books became moldy. The lost fund was partially restored,large batches of books and individual rare editions came from more than 760 domestic libraries to replenish the lost funds. In a 2018 article on the web site "Siberian scientific news" it says that the fire destroyed 298 061 copy of monographs and periodicals; 146,716 books in Russian; 152,245 copies of foreign publications before 1930, arranged according to the classification system of academician Karl Baer (including the legendary Baer fund - about 62 thousand folios). The lost fund was replenish with 222,336 copies from 764 institutions were accepted for the restoration of funds. The loss of 62% of domestic books and 8% of publications from the Baer collection has been replenished. Also destroyed were 20,640 binders, or one third of the newspaper stock,this fund was also partially restored. Other sources say that 45% of the burned books in Russian and 13% in foreign were recovered.Before the fire, as of October 1, 1986, the collection of the library and libraries subordinate to it consisted of 17,288,365 items.

Senate Square (Russian: Сенатская площадь), formerly known as Decembrists' Square (Площадь Декабристов) from the 1920s to 2008, and (formally) as Peter's Square (Петровская площадь), from 1782 to 1925, is a city square in Saint Petersburg, Russia. It is situated on the left bank of the Bolshaya Neva, in front of Saint Isaac's Cathedral. In 1925 it was renamed Decembrists' Square to commemorate the Decembrist Revolt, which played out there in December 1825. The square is bounded by the Admiralty building to the east. On the west is the Senate Building and the Synod Building (now headquarters of the Constitutional Court of Russia). The Bronze Horseman monument, a statue honoring Peter the Great, has stood in the square since 1782 - whence the official name of "Peter's Square". On July 29, 2008, the square reverted to the name "Senate Square".