St Petersburg

Series in which art historians Dr Janina Ramirez and Alastair Sooke take us on three entertaining and revealing cultural city breaks. They explore St Petersburg through its dazzling art and architecture, wanting to see how art has been used to enhance prestige and power in this city, ever since it was founded by Tsar Peter the Great. Surrounded by vast palaces, gilded domes and imposing Soviet monuments, Janina and Alastair make a flying visit to their personal selection of Imperial, Communist and modern-day sights. They discover a city where art has always taken centre stage: from the intoxicating beauty of the state rooms at the Winter Palace to the bejewelled confections of Faberge; from the dark tunnels where curators guarded precious artefacts during the deadly siege of the city in the Second World War, to the apartment piled high with protest art painted by the outspoken 'dissident babushka'.