Just traveling by the city’s marvelous underground metro, one of the deepest in the world, can itself be a cultural treat. Over two million people a day ride the metro, traveling between its more than 50 stations on about 60 miles [98 kilometers] of track. Some stations are among the most beautiful to be found anywhere. In 1955, the year of the metro’s opening, The New York Times called the stations “a series of twentieth century underground palaces.”

[Pictures on page 26]

St. Petersburg’s subway stations have been described as “underground palaces”