Area: The city of St. Petersburg itself is 606.8 sq. km. In 1993 a new political unit called "Greater St. Petersburg" was established which increased the area to 1,400 sq. km with 17 regions and settlements including Zelenogorsk, Kolpino, Kronshtadt, Lomonosov, Pavlovsk, Peterhof, Pushkin, and Sestroretsk.

Population: In 1992 the population of St. Petersburg was 4.4 million; Greater St. Petersburg had about 5 million inhabitants.

Physical Geography: St. Petersburg lies on a very flat marshy delta of the Neva River, on the Gulf of Finland extension of the Baltic Sea. The Neva River starts some 64 km northeast from the enormous Lake Lagoda and flows across a flat marshy plain and through a delta of 42 islands which now is the heart of St. Petersburg. See MAP of St. Petersburg Region and of Lake Lagoda.

Location: St. Petersburg is located on the Gulf of Finland (Finskiy zaliv), 600 km northwest of Moscow and 300 km due east of Helsinki. It is located at 59° 57' latitude north, the same latitude as Grand Prairie, Alberta, Canada, and Anchorage, Alaska, USA.

Long Summer Days: The days are very long from late May to the end of July, with the sun dipping below the horizon for just a few hours on June 21. It never really gets dark! The White Nights Festival celebration of these long days and short nights runs officially from the middle of June to the middle of July.

Longest Day: 17 hours, 31 minutes on June 21. The sun rises at 4:43 and sets at 22:20.

Long Winter Nights: Winters are long and dark with just 7 hrs of daylight on Dec. 21 compared to 17.5 hrs of daylight on June 21.

Shortest Day: 6 hours, 57 minutes on Dec. 22. The sun rises at 9 and sets at 15:57, making it almost perpetually dark in winter.

Altitude and Floods: Average land height only varies from 3-4 m above sea level to 30 m above sea level. The very flatness is evident from the top of St. Isaac's Cathedral. Much of St. Petersburg is almost at sea level and is subject to flooding from storms blowing off the Gulf of Finland. As a result, floods reached 3.75 m on Nov 7, 1824 and 3.69 m on September 23, 1924.
The misguided dam across the mouth of the delta (see MAP) was an attempt to prevent such floods. It was never completed because of the rapid accumulation of pollutants behind the dam which pointed to an ecological disaster if the water could not be refreshed by the tides.
The highest point in St. Pbg is 176 m in the Walnut (Orekhovaya) Mountain of Duderhof heights located in the south of the city. Pulkovo Airport is 76 m above sea level.

Waterways and Islands: There are 49 rivers and canals in the delta creating nearly 300 km of waterways and about 15 gulfs and 100 bodies of water (lakes, ponds, reservoirs). The 101 islands have been united into 42 islands. Vasilevskiy Ostrov is 10.9 sq. km, Peterburgskaya Storona is 6.2 sq. km, Dekabristov Ostov is 3.8 sq. km.