Sankt-Petersburg in the eyes of marquis de Custine, a European, and Alexander Hercen, a Russian European

This article is an attempt at reflecting on the history of a legendary Sankt-Petersburg - a symbol of Russia’s power and potential. Built by Peter I, the new capital - antithesis to an old and wooden Moscow - identified with antichristian Europeanization became an object of deliberations for a traveller and a writer, European marquis de Custine, author of letters from his journey throughout Nicholas I’s Russia, collected as Russia in 1839,and an open-minded representative of Russian Europeans, a thinker Alexander Hercen, who happened to live in that “empire of facades”. The similarity of many of their observations and assessments, especially with regard to Petersburg of Nicholas I’s period, seems surprising