St Petersburg Hotels

For sheer grandeur and elegance, it's hard to beat the Belmond. Sprawling over three Italianate buildings between Nevsky prospekt and Iskusstv ploshchad, the hotel has 300 rooms with elegant marble bathrooms, plush featherbeds, delightful period details and sweeping city views. Luxury facilities include boutiques, an opulent spa and three fine dining restaurants.

You can’t actually stay at the Hermitage, but this grand baroque hotel, run by the owners of the State Museum, is the next best thing. Set in a gorgeously modernised mansion, it recreates the grandeur of Catherine’s riverside palace, down to the arcades of Ionic columns and lavish ballroom. Rooms have sumptuous fabrics, stylish furnishings and high-speed internet.

It would be hard to find grander facilities than at the Kempinski Hotel Moika 22. Minutes from the Hermitage, it combines 21st-century facilities with touches of imperial grandeur. Rooms have high-speed Wi-Fi, 24-hour room service, and goose-down pillows and duvets. The hotel also boasts two restaurants, a bar and lounge, an English-style tearoom and a famously well-stocked wine cellar.

With an enviable location on Nevsky prospekt, the Corinthia offers sleek modernity in place of the usual historical flourishes. The hotel features a grand 19th-century frontage, but inside everything is stylish and contemporary, with designer furniture, LCD TVs and high-speed Wi-Fi. There’s even a Russian restaurant, a Viennese café and two bars.

Set in a stately 18th-century mansion overlooking the Moyka River, the Pushka offers tastefully decorated rooms at a reasonable price. A boutique atmosphere pervades, and rooms have wooden floors and fabrics and furnishings in subtle colours. Wi-Fi access is complementary and, unusually, a buffet breakfast is included in the room rates.

Close to the Nikolsky Cathedral in a calm neighbourhood of canals and townhouses, Alexander House offers quirky, inviting rooms decked out with everything from Afghan rugs to Chinese calligraphy. Each is different, but all have phones, flatscreen TVs and Wi-Fi. There’s even a tranquil breakfast terrace and a vine-cloaked courtyard garden.

This small and peaceful hotel is set in a quiet residential neighbourhood, 10 minutes from the Mariinsky Theatre. The hotel runs regular shuttle services to Nevsky prospekt and the 46 rooms range from modestly sized singles to family sized studios, suites, and apartments. A breakfast buffet is included in the price.

This tidy, contemporary hotel has a great location, across from the Cathedral of Our Lady of Vladimir, in the bustling Vladimirskaya district.. The hotel offers in-room internet access, cable television, IDD phones, a fitness centre, plus the three must-haves for any Russian hotel – a restaurant, bar and sauna.

Budget hotels are thin on the ground in St Petersburg, but Soul Kitchen impressively fills the gap with boutique rooms, comfy dorms and communal areas you’ll actually want to spend time in. The impressive list of perks includes free Wi-Fi, free phone calls and a shared kitchen. It also has a lovely canal-side location, a block from St Isaac’s Cathedral.