Saint Petersburg has two planetariums, and they are not branches of the same organisation. Buying the wrong ticket is a common mistake: one venue is a lecture hall with a live presenter, the other is a giant cinema dome.
The historic planetarium, Alexandrovsky Park 4
Open since 1959, five to ten minutes on foot from Gorkovskaya metro, next to the Peter and Paul Fortress. The Star Hall is one of the largest in Russia and its centrepiece is a Carl Zeiss opto-mechanical projector — an optical machine, not a video file. Programmes are written in-house and delivered by a live lecturer. Six more halls surround it: an Observatory, the Space Journey hall, the Planetka hall with a panoramic screen for small children, the Laboratory of Entertaining Experiments with over 200 hands-on physics exhibits including a Foucault pendulum, the Krugozor hall and a hall of optical illusions.
Tickets are sold per hall, not per visit. From 1 July 2026: 800 roubles for adults and 500 for children aged 4–17, schoolchildren, students and pensioners; telescope observation programmes in the Observatory cost 850 roubles for everyone. A 300-rouble concession exists for large families, visitors with disabilities and their companions, but only at the box office. The box office opens half an hour before the first show and closes when the last one starts. There is no advance booking except for groups of ten or more. Most importantly, the house rules state plainly that latecomers are not admitted, and torn tickets are neither refunded nor exchanged. Children under seven must be accompanied by an adult, phones must be switched off, and filming during a Star Hall programme is forbidden.
