Visitors keep arriving at New Holland Island in October with skates in a backpack, expecting the famous ice rink — and find an empty lawn instead. Others skip the island entirely after September because they assume it shuts for winter. Both are wrong, and the difference matters if you only have a few days in Saint Petersburg.

Open all year, free to enter

The park works every day, all year round: 9:00 to 22:00 Monday to Thursday and 9:00 to 23:00 Friday to Sunday. Entry is free, no ticket or booking. One detail catches people out — the gates stop letting visitors in half an hour before closing time. What does end with summer is the open-air programme: the Summer Theatre in the courtyard of the Bottle building runs its concerts and performances on Friday, Saturday and Sunday through the warm season only, and the island's own guided tours (Russian, Russian Sign Language, English) also run in warm months.

The ice rink question

The rink appears every winter on the site of the big lawn and covers more than 2,000 square metres. Unlike the park itself, the rink is ticketed. Its ticket office, skate rental, luggage storage and a heated changing gallery sit under one roof in a pavilion. Rental skates run from size 25 to 47, and skating aids for beginners are free. The ice is refrigerated and holds up to +10°C, so a mild week does not cancel your plans. The opening date changes from year to year and is announced by the island on its own site — check the rink page a few days before you go rather than trusting last year's blog posts.

Where to go when it rains

The Bottle, the round brick building full of cafés and shops, is open 8:00–23:00 Monday to Thursday and 8:00–24:00 Friday to Sunday. House 12 holds Community, an indoor city living room with a reading room, work desks, Wi-Fi, board games and a cloakroom: open daily 12:00–21:00, entry 300 roubles for the whole day, free for children under 14, pensioners and visitors with disabilities. Autumn lectures, film screenings and language clubs move there. The Pavilion hosts small exhibitions but opens only during shows, so check the programme first.

Getting there

The address is 2 Admiralteysky Canal Embankment. There is no metro at the door: Admiralteyskaya is 1.9 km away, Vasileostrovskaya 2 km, Sennaya Ploshchad 2.4 km. The nearest stop is Ploshchad Truda, served by buses 2, 3, 6, 22, 27, 70, 71, 100, 262 and trolleybuses 5, 12, 22. There is no parking lot, dogs are not allowed, and glass bottles and alcohol are refused at the entrance.

Photo: Florstein / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0