It is difficult for a Petersburger who, admiring Smolny, crosses the Bolsheokhtinsky Bridge today, to imagine that exactly 700 years ago, on the right bank just before the bridge, on a small cape at the mouth of the Okhta River, stood the Swedish fortified city of Landskrona, which in translation means "crown of the earth" A year later, the “crown of the earth” was destroyed and burned by the Novgorodians, who considered themselves the original owners of this land, and the Russian town of

The Russian drifting polar station “North Pole-32” begins to operate in the Arctic. The size of the ice floe, which became the base of the station, is impressive - three by five kilometers, and the thickness of the ice is on average 4 - 5 meters. There are 12 participants in the expedition. For now they are living in tents, but in the coming days they must assemble seven modular houses - for the accommodation of polar explorers and for equipping laboratories.

According to a certain general, “yesterday we lived in the post-war period, and today we are already living in the pre-war period.” Something similar happened in St. Petersburg. After Vladimir Yakovlev announced his reluctance to run for a third term, the city immediately fell into a pre-election state. This fact in itself is neither good nor bad - it just so happens.

Last week, the City Court put an end to the sensational case of the murder of the captain of the police “Spetsur” Yevgeny Malikov. They spoke about the custom -made nature of the murder immediately after the incident, despite the fact that the victims of unknown killers was not an official or a businessman, but a police officer.

How to make the northern capital more European? While sociologists are scratching their heads, different companies are trying, each in their own way, to bring closer the longed-for moment of the city’s merger with Western civilization. The publishers of the telephone directory “All Petersburg” are making a significant contribution to this difficult but noble cause: by the anniversary they promised to equip a thousand street payphones with their products.

“Wild” tourists lit bonfires and barbecued here. All the benches here were broken and the lamp shades were broken. Here, all the urns are drowned in the lake, and stray dogs roam around the park... This is the State Oranienbaum Museum-Reserve.