Carlo Rossi did not design a palace so much as a piece of a city. Between 1819 and 1825 he built the Mikhailovsky Palace for Grand Duke Mikhail Pavlovich, younger brother of Alexander I, and at the same time laid out the square in front of it and the streets leading to it, so that the façades all answer one another. Today the palace houses the Russian Museum, which holds one of the greatest collections of Russian art anywhere, from medieval icons through Repin's huge canvases to Malevich and the avant-garde. Behind it the Mikhailovsky Garden runs down to the Moika, shaded and calm in the middle of the city.
Next door, the Church of the Saviour on Spilled Blood, all onion domes and coloured tiles, marks the spot on the Griboyedov Canal where Emperor Alexander II was mortally wounded by a bomb in 1881. Between the church, the garden, the Field of Mars and the Summer Garden, this is one of the loveliest walks in Saint Petersburg, and all of it lies within the World Heritage Site of the historic centre.
Riding in the city centre has one rule that matters more than any other. From spring to autumn the bridges over the Neva are raised at night to let ships through, typically for several hours after midnight, and if you are on the wrong island when they go up, you wait. Locals plan whole evenings around the timetable; you should too. Beyond that, expect heavy traffic, cobbles and tram rails near the canals, hard-to-find parking and drivers who treat lane markings as suggestions.
Whether you should be riding here at all right now is a question for official travel advice: sanctions and practical barriers have made Russia very difficult for most Western visitors since 2022.
Fuel is available everywhere in a city of five million, though less so in the historic core itself. Saint Petersburg eats well, and Georgian restaurants, with khachapuri cheese bread and khinkali dumplings, are as much a part of the city's food culture as Russian ones. After the museum, sit in the garden by the Moika and watch the tourist boats slide under the bridges.