Sankt-Petersburg

Geographical location
St. Petersburg is a city and a federal subject located in Northwestern Federal District of Russia on the Neva River at the east end of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea.
St. Petersburg is situated on the middle taiga lowlands along the shores of the Neva Bay of the Gulf of Finland, and islands of the river delta. The largest are Vasilyevsky island (besides the artificial island between Obvodny canal and Fontanka, and Kotlin in the Neva Bay), Petrogradsky, Dekabristov and Krestovsky. The latter together with Yelagin and Kamenny island are covered mostly by parks.
St. Petersburg experiences a humid continental climate of the cool summer subtype (Köppen: Dfb), due to the distinct moderating influence of the Baltic Sea cyclones. Summers are typically cool, humid and quite short, while winters are long, cold, but with frequent warm spells.

Administrative division
Founded by Tsar Peter the Great on May 27, 1703 as a "window to Europe", it was capital of the Russian Empire for more than two hundred years (1712-1728, 1732-1918). St. Petersburg ceased being the capital in 1918 after the Russian Revolution of 1917. Russia's second largest and Europe's third largest city (by city limit) after Moscow and London. 4.6 million people live in the city, and over 6 million people in the city with its vicinity. Saint Petersburg is a major European cultural center, and the second important Russian port on the Baltic Sea (after Primorsk, Leningrad Oblast). The city, as federal subject, has a total area of 1439 square km.
Saint Petersburg is a federal subject of Russia. The political life of Saint Petersburg is regulated by the city charter adopted by the city legislature in 1998.
The area of Saint Petersburg city proper is 605.8 km². The area of the federal subject is 1439 km², which contains the Saint Petersburg proper, and suburban towns (Kolpino, Krasnoye Selo, Kronstadt, Lomonosov, Pavlovsk, Peterhof, Pushkin, Sestroretsk and Zelenogorsk), all together over 20 municipalities and rural localities.
Culture
St. Petersburg enjoys the image of being the most European city of Russia. Among cities of the world with over one million people, Saint Petersburg is the northernmost. The historic center of St. Petersburg is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Russia's political and cultural center for 200 years, the city is impressive, and is sometimes referred to in Russia as "the Northern Capital".
Saint Petersburg has long been a leading center of science and education in Russia.

Economy
St. Petersburg is a major trade gateway, financial and industrial center of Russia specializing in oil and gas trade, shipbuilding yards, aerospace industry, radio and electronics, software and computers; machine building, heavy machinery and transport, including tanks and other military equipment, mining, instrument manufacture, ferrous and nonferrous metallurgy (production of aluminum alloys), chemicals, pharmaceuticals, medical equipment, publishing and printing, food and catering, wholesale and retail, textile and apparel industries, and many other businesses.
St. Petersburg has three large cargo seaports: Bolshoi Port St. Petersburg, Kronstadt, and Lomonosov. International cruise liners are served at the passenger port at Morskoy Vokzal on the west end of the Vasilevsky Ostrov. A complex system of riverports on both banks of the Neva river are interconnected with the system of seaports, thus making St. Petersburg the main link between the Baltic sea and the rest of Russia through the Volga-Baltic Waterway.
The Saint Petersburg Mint (Monetny Dvor), founded in 1724, is one of the largest mints in the world, it mints Russian coins, medals and badges. St. Petersburg is also home to the oldest and largest Russian foundry, Monumentskulptura, which made thousands of sculptures and statues that are now gracing public parks of St. Petersburg, as well as many otner cties. Monuments and bronze statues of the Tsars, as well as other important historic figures and dignitaries, and other world famous monuments, such as the sculptures by Peter Clodt von Jürgensburg, Paolo Troubetzkoy, Pavel Antokolsky, and others, were made here.
Toyota is building a plant in Shuishary, one of the suburbs; General Motors and Nissan have signed deals with the Russian government too. Automotive and parts industry is on the rise here during the last decade. Saint Petersburg is known as a "beer capital" of Russia, due to the supply and quality of local water, contributing over 30% of the domestic production of beer with its five large-scale breweries including Europe's second largest brewery Baltika, Vena (both operated by BBH), Heineken Brewery, Stepan Razin (both by Heineken) and Tinkoff brewery (SUN-InBev). St. Petersburg has the second largest construction industry in Russia, including commercial, housing and road construction.
In 2006 Saint-Petersburg's city budget was 179,9 billion rubles, and is planned to double by 2012. The federal subject's gross regional product as of 2005 was 667,905.4 million Russian rubles, ranked 4th in Russia, after Moscow, Tyumen Oblast, and Moscow Oblast, or 145,503.3 rubles per capita, ranked 12th among Russia's federal subjects, contributed mostly by wholesale and retail trade and repair services (24.7%) as well as processing industry (20.9%) and transportation and telecommunications (15.1%).