The National Congress Palace

This guide to the National Congress Palace in Saint Petersburg traces Peter the Great's ambition to outdo Versailles, the string of architects he hired and lost before the foundation stone finally went down in 1720, and the Grand Dukes who later filled its halls with music by Johann Strauss and Rimsky-Korsakov. You'll hear how German occupation left barely more than a stone shell, and how the ruin then served for decades as an Arctic weather cadets' school before standing empty. Restoration began in 2000, rebuilding fountains Peter had only sketched.