Petersburg Beyond the Postcards: Seven Places Few Visitors Reach

Lists of "non-touristy Petersburg" usually open with Nevsky Prospect and get the addresses wrong. Here are seven places that genuinely see few visitors, with the address, the architect and the heritage status checked for each one. Some of them take an hour and a suburban train to reach, and we say so upfront.

The Ark church in Pontonny

A concrete ship with vertical fins stands in a village on the city's southern edge. It was designed in the late 1970s as a museum for the local plywood plant, begun in 1981 and finished only in 2010 — by then it belonged to a congregation of the Russian Church of Evangelical Christians. It is not an Orthodox church, as many posts claim, but a Pentecostal one. The architects were Igor Shmelyov and Bentsion Fabritsky, and the style is Soviet postmodernism, rare in this region.

One warning that other lists skip: this is not central Petersburg. Pontonny belongs to the Kolpino district, and the address is 11A Fanerny Lane. The nearest metro station, Elizarovskaya, is more than sixteen kilometres away. The practical route is a suburban train from Moskovsky station to Pontonnaya. Allow half a day, and remember the building is in use for services, not a museum.

The Moskovsky District Soviet building

The huge curved block with a tower at 129 Moskovsky Prospect is often mislabelled. It is the Moskovsky District Soviet, built between 1930 and 1935 by Igor Fomin, Valentin Daugul and Boris Serebrovsky, and it shows Leningrad architecture moving from constructivism towards art deco. The district administration, a court and a post office work inside, so you look at it from the street. In October 2025 the city heritage committee listed it as a regional monument. It is two kilometres from Park Pobedy metro.

The Chesme Church

A pink and white church with spiky pinnacles, hidden away at 12 Lensoveta Street. Yuri Velten built it in 1777–1780 for Catherine II to mark the Russian naval victory at Chesme Bay in 1770. It is Russian neo-Gothic and a monument of federal significance, just over a kilometre from Park Pobedy metro. The Chesme Palace by the same architect stands next door.

Utkina Dacha where two rivers meet

A late eighteenth-century manor with a curved gallery sits where the Okkervil flows into the Okhta, at 2 Utkin Prospect. The style is classicism and the status is federal. After decades as a ruin it passed to the Museum of Urban Sculpture and is being restored, so there is no public access inside — but the riverbank view is the point. Less than a kilometre from Ladozhskaya metro, and it feels a hundred kilometres from the city.

Gausvald Dacha on Kamenny Island

A wooden art nouveau villa with a turret, built in 1898 by Vladimir Chagin and Vasily Schöne, and one of the first modernist dachas in the city. In the early 1980s it played Irene Adler's house in the Soviet Sherlock Holmes series, which is why most visitors come. The house is private and closed; you see it from 2nd Beryozovaya Alley, about two kilometres from Krestovsky Ostrov metro.

Smolenskoye Lutheran Cemetery

Founded in 1747 on Dekabristov Island, with the first burial in January 1748. Seven hectares, somewhere between twenty-five and thirty thousand graves, and the German, Swedish and Dutch surnames of the people who built the city. This is a working cemetery, not an attraction: come quietly and do not stage photo shoots. About 1.5 kilometres from Primorskaya metro. The Orthodox Smolenskoye cemetery next door takes almost all the foot traffic.

Benois Garden near Politekhnicheskaya

At 17 Tikhoretsky Prospect stands the farm of Julius Benois, from the family of architects and artists. It once supplied milk to half the city, later became a state farm, and the house was handed to an art school in the 1980s; a fire damaged it in 2001. Since 2006 the grounds have been known as Benois Garden, now a city space with a farmers' market, a winter ice rink and a café. Just over a kilometre from Politekhnicheskaya metro.

How to see them

Six of the seven are within walking distance of a metro station and split neatly into a southern route (District Soviet, Chesme Church) and a northern one across the islands (Gausvald, the Lutheran cemetery, Benois Garden). The Ark deserves its own half-day trip. If you want more addresses like these, we have separate guides to Kolomyagi, a village inside the city, and to the houses on stilts on Novosmolenskaya Embankment.

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