Peter the Great chose a swamp and told it to become a capital. In 1703, at the mouth of the Neva, where the river meets the Gulf of Finland, he founded Saint Petersburg on marshy islands that had belonged to Sweden, and forced tens of thousands of labourers to drain, pile and build. The Neva is only 74 kilometres long, but it carries the whole outflow of Lake Ladoga, one of Europe's largest lakes, and in the city it runs wide and deep between granite embankments, the water slate-grey and quick. The stretch on the ride list is upstream and east of the historic centre, where industrial suburbs and old villages line its banks.
In summer the city lives on the light. The white nights, around the solstice, never get fully dark, and people walk the embankments at two in the morning to watch the drawbridges rise to let ships pass. The great buildings that face the river, the Winter Palace, the Admiralty and the Peter and Paul Fortress, give it a unique skyline, with the gold spire of the fortress glittering across the water. The city's canals and islands, in the delta, make it feel like a northern cousin of Amsterdam or Venice.
I should be straight about riding here. Since 2022 entry into Russia for most European travellers has been very difficult, with restricted land borders, sanctions, and restrictions on insurance and vehicle documents, and the situation changes frequently. If you are reading this as a plan, check the current rules first. As a place, though, the Neva is among the great rivers of European history.
If you do get there, the roads within the city are wide, with heavy traffic, trams, and tricky bridges, and the cobbles and tram rails are slippery in the wet. Petrol stations are plentiful around the ring road and on the main routes, and the suburbs along the river have all the usual services. The weather is cool and damp for much of the year, with winters that are dark and icy, and the best months are June to August.
The river in the evening, with the sky pink over the water, is a view that few cities can match.