Learning English

Presenter
St Petersburg, just three hundred years old but with a history as rich as any ancient city in the world. St Petersburg is my city. A city of great culture - a city of great conflict. A city looking out to the future - a city rooted in the past. St Petersburg has had three different names in the past century, and it is still searching for its real identity.

People here have always enjoyed looking at their city from a different perspective. Some, by taking to the rooftops and viewing the beauty and sometimes the ugliness of the urban panorama.

Mikhail Markevich, local historian
People go up on the roofs because the city can be dominating and unfriendly, it's a chance to conquer the city. You are on top and the city is at your feet. Also, from the rooftops you can survey the beauty and sometimes the ugliness of the city: chimneys, stone walls and sunsets can be a stunning picture, an internal vision.

Presenter
Today for many young people climbing on the roofs is an adventure. It is an act of defiance and an assertion of independence. It's also a new way of meeting friends.

The heritage of St Petersburg is central to the city's identity.

This is the old tram depot of Vasiliyevsky Island - now a museum housing some of the old vehicles that threaded the streets of the city for more than a century. In 1941 when the city - then Leningrad - was blockaded by Nazi Germany, transport came to a standstill. But within a few months the trams started to run again despite the devastating bombing. Seeing them back on the streets gave people hope of liberation.

Kyrill Nyqvist, Electric Transport Museum director
For many generations trams in St Petersburg and Leningrad had a very special meaning for people. Many had romantic assignations on the trams: they would arrange to meet at a certain tramstop or would go to a park by a certain route. At one time, trams ran through the whole of the city... wherever you travelled, it would be by tram.

Presenter
Peering into history - the naval strength of the Russian Empire was forged behind these walls, on the island of New Holland.

It was only at the beginning of this century that New Holland was handed over to the St Petersburg authorities and a mysterious and secretive naval base began a new life - open to everyone - as a huge complex for the arts.

Polina Fradkina, musician
When I was a little girl I studied near here, every morning I would walk past it and it was always so attractive and mysterious, it was like a fairy castle, I always wondered what was inside and now I can see a lot of children, happy people, just, normal life going on.

Presenter
Freedom and rebellion. Memory and hope. Concepts and symbols deeply entrenched in St Petersburg. And its continual search for identity is what ensures the vibrant and imaginative spirit of My City.